five thousand, not four hundred only, concerned; although, what
with their expeditions and employments abroad, the Athenians had never
yet assembled to discuss a question important enough to bring five
thousand of them together. The emissaries were also told what to say
upon all other points, and were so sent off immediately after the
establishment of the new government, which feared, as it turned out
justly, that the mass of seamen would not be willing to remain under the
oligarchical constitution, and, the evil beginning there, might be the
means of their overthrow.

Indeed at Samos the question of the oligarchy had already entered upon a
new phase, the following events having taken place just at the time that
the Four Hundred were conspiring. That part of the Samian population
which has been mentioned as rising against the upper class, and as
being the democratic party, had now turned round, and yielding to the
solicitations of Pisander during his visit, and of the Athenians in
the conspiracy at Samos, had bound themselves by oaths to the number
of three hundred, and were about to fall upon the rest of their fellow
citizens, whom they now in their turn regarded as the democratic party.
Meanwhile they put to death one Hyperbolus, an Athenian, a pestilent
fellow that had been ostracized, not from fear of his influence or
position, but because he was a rascal and a disgrace to the city; being
aided in this by Charminus, one of the generals, and by some of the
Athenians with them, to whom they had sworn friendship, and with whom
they perpetrated other acts of the kind, and now determined to attack
the people. The latter got wind of what was coming, and told two of the
generals, Leon and Diomedon, who, on account of the credit which they
enjoyed with the commons, were unwilling supporters of the oligarchy;
and also Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus, the former a captain of a galley,
the latter serving with the heavy infantry, besides certain others who
had ever been thought most opposed to the conspirators, entreating them
not to look on and see them destroyed, and Samos, the sole remaining
stay of their empire, lost to the Athenians. Upon hearing this, the
persons whom they addressed now went round the soldiers one by one, and
urged them to resist, especially the crew of the Paralus, which was made
up entirely of Athenians and freemen, and had from time out of mind been
enemies of oligarchy, even when there was no such thing ex