others;
who, although among the most prominent members of the government (being
afraid, as they said, of the army at Samos, and most especially of
Alcibiades, and also lest the envoys whom they had sent to Lacedaemon
might do the state some harm without the authority of the people),
without insisting on objections to the excessive concentration of power
in a few hands, yet urged that the Five Thousand must be shown to exist
not merely in name but in reality, and the constitution placed upon
a fairer basis. But this was merely their political cry; most of them
being driven by private ambition into the line of conduct so surely
fatal to oligarchies that arise out of democracies. For all at once
pretend to be not only equals but each the chief and master of his
fellows; while under a democracy a disappointed candidate accepts his
defeat more easily, because he has not the humiliation of being beaten
by his equals. But what most clearly encouraged the malcontents was the
power of Alcibiades at Samos, and their own disbelief in the stability
of the oligarchy; and it was now a race between them as to which should
first become the leader of the commons.

Meanwhile the leaders and members of the Four Hundred most opposed to a
democratic form of government--Phrynichus who had had the quarrel with
Alcibiades during his command at Samos, Aristarchus the bitter and
inveterate enemy of the commons, and Pisander and Antiphon and others
of the chiefs who already as soon as they entered upon power, and again
when the army at Samos seceded from them and declared for a democracy,
had sent envoys from their own body to Lacedaemon and made every effort
for peace, and had built the wall in Eetionia--now redoubled their
exertions when their envoys returned from Samos, and they saw not only
the people but their own most trusted associates turning against them.
Alarmed at the state of things at Athens as at Samos, they now sent off
in haste Antiphon and Phrynichus and ten others with injunctions to make
peace with Lacedaemon upon any terms, no matter what, that should be at
all tolerable. Meanwhile they pushed on more actively than ever with the
wall in Eetionia. Now the meaning of this wall, according to Theramenes
and his supporters, was not so much to keep out the army of Samos, in
case of its trying to force its way into Piraeus, as to be able to let
in, at pleasure, the fleet and army of the enemy. For Eetionia is a mole
of Piraeus, clos