without their being able to extract from him the name of his
employer, or anything further than that he knew of many men who used
to assemble at the house of the commander of the Peripoli and at
other houses. Here the matter was allowed to drop. This so emboldened
Theramenes and Aristocrates and the rest of their partisans in the Four
Hundred and out of doors, that they now resolved to act. For by this
time the ships had sailed round from Las, and anchoring at Epidaurus had
overrun Aegina; and Theramenes asserted that, being bound for Euboea,
they would never have sailed in to Aegina and come back to anchor at
Epidaurus, unless they had been invited to come to aid in the designs
of which he had always accused the government. Further inaction
had therefore now become impossible. In the end, after a great many
seditious harangues and suspicions, they set to work in real earnest.
The heavy infantry in Piraeus building the wall in Eetionia, among
whom was Aristocrates, a colonel, with his own tribe, laid hands upon
Alexicles, a general under the oligarchy and the devoted adherent of the
cabal, and took him into a house and confined him there. In this they
were assisted by one Hermon, commander of the Peripoli in Munychia,
and others, and above all had with them the great bulk of the heavy
infantry. As soon as the news reached the Four Hundred, who happened to
be sitting in the council chamber, all except the disaffected wished at
once to go to the posts where the arms were, and menaced Theramenes
and his party. Theramenes defended himself, and said that he was ready
immediately to go and help to rescue Alexicles; and taking with him one
of the generals belonging to his party, went down to Piraeus, followed
by Aristarchus and some young men of the cavalry. All was now panic and
confusion. Those in the city imagined that Piraeus was already taken and
the prisoner put to death, while those in Piraeus expected every moment
to be attacked by the party in the city. The older men, however, stopped
the persons running up and down the town and making for the stands of
arms; and Thucydides the Pharsalian, proxenus of the city, came forward
and threw himself in the way of the rival factions, and appealed to them
not to ruin the state, while the enemy was still at hand waiting for his
opportunity, and so at length succeeded in quieting them and in keeping
their hands off each other. Meanwhile Theramenes came down to Piraeus,
being himse