Such a hubbub, such an outcry, as followed this address has seldom come from human lungs or from human throats. One after another the champions of the people rose, with the one answer, supported by six thousand voices, ‘Never!’ The orators declared the democracy eternal. The enemies of Alkibiades protested against the enormity of recalling one who had been convicted of the worst possible offence against the laws of Athens, one who was still civilly dead. The Eumolpidai, the privileged priests of the cult of Demeter, who felt, perhaps, as strongly for their exclusive rights and emoluments as for the honour of the goddess, reminded the assembly of the awful curses which still rested on him for his profanation of the mysteries of which they were the guardians, and which he had treated with derision and contempt. When the opponents of his proposition had expended all their wrath, Peisandros rose again to answer them. ‘Of what use is it to preserve the mere form and semblance of a constitution when the spirit of the thing is gone, and the state is tottering? Is it not better to modify somewhat your existing laws than to lose them altogether, and with them your power of making others? We ask only that you will let your democratic forms be in abeyance while we treat with the Great King. He is ready to come to your assistance if you will meet him in a reasonable spirit. Let, then, the power of the many for a time be entrusted to the keeping of your wisest counsellors, chosen by yourselves, men whom all of you can trust; and when the clouds, which now are big and bursting with destruction, shall have passed away, you can have back again your glorious and time-honoured constitution. There is but one man who can save you in this hour of need; he is a lover of the people: that man is Alkibiades.’ The force of this argument, and the apparent truth of these assertions, had so much influence on the assembly that objectors were silenced, and the people took the first step towards the abdication of their power, though they were not prepared to make so violent a change as that which had been just suggested to them all at once. They decreed that ten deputies should be sent with Peisandros to Tissaphernes to arrange the best terms on which an alliance with Persia might be carried out.