Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/414

 4o6 THE FORT IS DEMOLISHED [vill they began to use threats. Theramenes protested, and offered to go with them at once and rescue Alexicles. So, taking one of the generals who was of his own faction, he went down to the Piraeus, Aristarchus and certain young knights came also to the scene of action. Great and bewildering was the tumult, for in the city the people fancied that the Piraeus was in the hands of the insurgents, and that their prisoner had been killed, and the inhabitants of the Piraeus that they were on the point of being attacked from the city. The elder men with difficulty restrained the citizens, who were running up and down and flying to arms. Thucydides of Pharsalus, the proxenus of Athens in that cit}', happening to be on the spot, kept throwing himself in every man's way and loudly entreating the people, when the enemy was lying in wait so near, not to destroy their country. At length they were pacified, and refrained from laying hands on one another. Theramenes, who was himself a general, came to the Piraeus, and in an angry voice pretended to rate the soldiers, while Aristar- chus and the party opposed to the people were furious. No effect was produced on the mass of the hoplites, who were for going to work at once. They began asking Thera- menes if he thought that the fort was being built to any good end, and whether it would not be better demolished. He answered that, if they thought so, he thought so too. And immediately the hoplites and a crowd of men from the Piraeus got on the walls and began to pull them down. The cry addressed to the people was, ' Whoever wishes the Five Thousand to rule and not the Four Hundred, let him come and help us.' For they still veiled their real minds under the name of the Five Thousand, and did not venture to say outright 'Whoever wishes the people to rule': they feared that the Five Thousand might actually exist, and that a man speaking in ignorance to his neigh- bour might get into trouble. The Four Hundred there- fore did not wish the Five Thousand either to exist or to be known not to exist, thinking that to give so many a