At Samos the feeling we lately saw growing amongst the Athenians there was daily becoming more acute. Both army and navy were verging on an open demonstration against the government at home. Alkibiades, never idle, in the midst of his apparent indolence, was not ignorant of the movement. And so it happened that one day, towards the end of the autumn of 412, a sailor named Agrestides landed at Samos. He was not long in making friends among the Athenian sailors who swarmed about Samos doing nothing. They met in the wine-shops, on the quays, in many places. Agrestides had been in the Sicilian expedition, and had escaped, he said, after the fatal fight at Syrakuse, when the whole fleet with almost all the Athenian sailors was lost. He had been picked up by a Carthaginian vessel, and after many wanderings and adventures had found himself at Sparta, where he had passed as a Messanian; thence, he told them, he had got on board a Spartan ship and had gone with certain Spartan commissioners to Kaunos, and so on to Miletos. While there he had met his old general, Alkibiades, who was, he heard, greater than ever, and was now governing, in the satrap’s name, all the Ionian possessions of the Persian king.’ Having listened to this not improbable romance, they wanted to know more about Sicily and the fatal expedition, for then they would hear more about Alkibiades. Alkibiades was the hero of the fleet at Samos. They all wanted to hear of him. Even while he had been dealing the deadliest blows at them through Sparta, the Athenians had felt a sort of pride in him. It was not so much Lakedaimôn that was fighting them as it was one of themselves, justly incensed at the wrong the misled demos had done him, who was punishing them. And when Lakedaimôn in turn found he was too great for them, it was he, an Athenian, who was managing Tissaphernes, and leading Lakedaimôn such a dance as she had little bargained for. Agrestides, having made due observation, got himself taken to Peisandros and some others of the leaders, who he discovered would be the most fit to receive his overtures. When he was convinced of their sincerity he told them that he had come from his great master, who was longing to get back amongst his countrymen again. This was, indeed, good news for them. It was soon settled that Peisandros and two others should return with Agrestides to Magnesia. When they got there they found he had not exaggerated that part of his story in which he had told them of his master’s influence with Tissaphernes. The heart of Alkibiades yearned towards his countrymen when he saw them coming, as messengers from the Athenian forces at Samos, to make overtures to him. He felt as a brother meeting his brethren after a long absence among strangers in a distant land. All the magnificence, the soft allurements of his eastern life, seemed but the toys of children to him, as a long vista opened up before him, with home and Athens and honour at the end of it.