Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/89

 MUTINY AGAINS'l Thr FOJ/R IIUNDRKD. G7 force to all their previous assertions about the imminent dangers connected with the citadel at Ectioneia. Amidst this exaggerated alarm and discord, the general body ttf hoplites became penetrated with aversion, 1 every day increas- ing, against the new citadel. At length the hoplites of the tribe in which Aristokrates, the warmest partisan of Theramenes was taxiarch, being on duty and engaged in the prosecution of the building, broke out into absolute mutiny against it, seized the person of Alexikles, the general in command, and put him under arrest in a neighboring house ; while the peripoli, or youthful military police, stationed at Munychia, under Hermon, abetted them in the proceeding. 2 News of this violence was speedily conveyed to the Four Hundred, who were at that moment holding session in the senate-house, Theramenes himself being present. Their wrath and menace were at first vented against him as the instigator of the revolt, a charge against which he could only vindicate himself by volunteering to go among the foremost for the liberation of the prisoner. He forthwith started in haste for the Peirreus, accompanied by one of the generals, his colleague, who was of the same political sentiment as himself. A third among the generals, Aristarchus, one of the fiercest of the oli- garchs, followed him, probably from mistrust, together with some of the younger knights, horsemen, or richest class in the state, identified with the cause of the Four Hundred. The oligarchical partisans ran to marshal themselves in arms, alarming exaggera- tions being rumored, that Alexikles had been put to death, and that Peirrcus was under armed occupation ; while at Peiroeus the insurgents imagined that the hoplites from the city were in full march to attack them. For a time all was confusion and angry sentiment, which the slightest untoward accident might have in- named into sanguinary civil carnage. Nor was it appeased except by earnest intreaty and remonstrance from the elder citi- zens, aided by Thucydides of Pharsalus, proxenus or public guest of Athens, in his native town, on the ruinous madness of such discord when a foreign enemy was almost at their gates. 1 Tliucyd. viii, 92. T<) 6e neytarov, T&V OTrZtrdiv rb art^of ravra etfoi Atro Phryniclms.
 * riutarch, Alkibiatl. c. 26, represents Hermon as one of the assassins (4.