Besides these many causes of complaint, the sort of general the demos had sent out to them did not tend to make them love the demos any better. Phrynichos was universally distrusted and disliked. Sprung from the lowest class of the people, he had made his way upward by the basest means. He had been one of those, the most odious of mankind, who gained a living by bringing accusations against citizens to the dikasterion—sycophants they were called at Athens. At all times and places the office of delator has been held in horror and contempt, though it has not seldom raised those vile enough to adopt it as a calling, to wealth and even civil dignity. This calling was little known in Greece, and in that respect, democratic Athens shows its moral superiority to imperial Rome. But Phrynichos succeeded and grew rich. He grubbed together enough money to make himself conspicuous, and he had sufficient cunning to mislead the people. Of genius or capacity to lead a senate or an army, he had none, but he was great in intrigue. Cunning is ever the mark of littleness of mind, and generally ends by destroying the possessor of that gift; so it was with Phrynichos. Vague rumours, too, had reached the Athenians at Samos from time to time of a huge fleet—of three hundred sail, it was said—lying at Aspendos, waiting the orders of the Great King to come into Ionian waters to destroy them. They cared not much for Persian ships or Persian sailors, but three hundred long-ships added to the large fleet the Spartans had already—what could even Athenians do against such odds? It was all the fault of this infernal demos; but for them there would have been no quarrel with the Spartans. Even the demos must see to what their rule had brought the state, and any change would be accepted rather than the starvation which now threatened them. The demos, though it loves shouting, haranguing, or listening at its Ekklesia, does not love starvation. So something must and should be done to change all this. Thus thought and spake to one another the well-to-do Athenian sailors, as they lay idling away their time, after the manner of sailors, in the fair port of Samos. Not far off, at Miletos, on one of these evenings, Alkibiades was supping in the frugal Spartan fashion with his friend Astyochos, High Admiral of the Spartan fleet, when they were suddenly interrupted in their conversation by a messenger who had just arrived from Kaunus, bearing an urgent despatch from the commissioners of Sparta.