he Syracusans, who were most like the Athenians in character, and also
most successful in combating them.

Nevertheless, upon receipt of the news, the Athenians manned twenty
ships and called immediately a first assembly in the Pnyx, where they
had been used to meet formerly, and deposed the Four Hundred and voted
to hand over the government to the Five Thousand, of which body all who
furnished a suit of armour were to be members, decreeing also that no
one should receive pay for the discharge of any office, or if he did
should be held accursed. Many other assemblies were held afterwards,
in which law-makers were elected and all other measures taken to form a
constitution. It was during the first period of this constitution that
the Athenians appear to have enjoyed the best government that they ever
did, at least in my time. For the fusion of the high and the low was
effected with judgment, and this was what first enabled the state to
raise up her head after her manifold disasters. They also voted for the
recall of Alcibiades and of other exiles, and sent to him and to the
camp at Samos, and urged them to devote themselves vigorously to the
war.

Upon this revolution taking place, the party of Pisander and Alexicles
and the chiefs of the oligarchs immediately withdrew to Decelea, with
the single exception of Aristarchus, one of the generals, who hastily
took some of the most barbarian of the archers and marched to Oenoe.
This was a fort of the Athenians upon the Boeotian border, at that
moment besieged by the Corinthians, irritated by the loss of a party
returning from Decelea, who had been cut off by the garrison. The
Corinthians had volunteered for this service, and had called upon the
Boeotians to assist them. After communicating with them, Aristarchus
deceived the garrison in Oenoe by telling them that their countrymen
in the city had compounded with the Lacedaemonians, and that one of the
terms of the capitulation was that they must surrender the place to the
Boeotians. The garrison believed him as he was general, and besides knew
nothing of what had occurred owing to the siege, and so evacuated the
fort under truce. In this way the Boeotians gained possession of Oenoe,
and the oligarchy and the troubles at Athens ended.

To return to the Peloponnesians in Miletus. No pay was forthcoming from
any of the agents deputed by Tissaphernes for that purpose upon his
departure for Aspendus; neither the Phoenician fleet n