Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/396

 383 THE ITl^'E TIIOUS.r^'D A GOOD PRETENCE [v. II 72 They also sent ten commissioners to Samos, who were T-,, , to pacify the army, and to explain that ilicv also send an '^ •' •' ' embassy to Samos, uho the oligarchy was not established with are to make an apology any design of injuring Athens or her ^°' '""'' citizens, but for the preservation of the whole state. The promoters of the change, they said, were five thousand, not four hundred; but never hitherto, owing to the pressure of war and of business abroad, had so many as five thousand assembled to deliberate even on the most important questions. They instructed them to say any- thing else which would have a good effect, and sent them on their mission as soon as they themselves were installed in the government. For they were afraid, and not without reason as the event showed, that the Athenian sailors would be impatient of the oligarchical system, and that disaffection would begin at Samos and end in their own overthrow. 73 At the very time when the Four Hundred were estab- „, ,., lishing themselves at Athens, a reaction But a reaction has ° _, ' set in at Samos. The 'lad Set in against the oligarchical Samian oligarchs, ivho movement at Samos. Some Samians of had themselves chancred 4.1, „ 1. u-luj ••11 ., ,.,■=' the popular party, which had originally sides, begin to use. . c> j violence. Hyf>erboli(s, risen up against the nobles, had changed a loiv demagogue, is sides again when Peisander came to the assassinated by them -^^^^^^, ^^^^ persuaded by him and his and their Athenian ac- . ^ •' complices. The sailors Athenian accomplices at Samos, had 0/ the /led rise and put formed a body of three hundred con- own. spirators and prepared to attack the rest of the popular party who had previously been their comrades. There was a certain Hyperbolus, an Athenian of no character, who, not for any fear of his power and influence, but for his villany, and because the city was ashamed of him, had been ostracised. This man was assassinated by them, and they were abetted in the act by Charminus, one of the generals, and by certain of the Cp. viii. 21, 63 med.