Alkibiades, rather weary of the effeminate life at the palace of the satrap, had been staying at a small country house which his indulgent friend had given him, in a secluded spot, far from the turmoil of the court, and some way inland, not far from the marble quarries at Melissa. Thither Tissaphernes had come in search of his friend, and had forced him to return with him to Magnesia. It was while staying there, and on the journey back, that he sounded the viceroy as to the limit of his powers, and made up his mind as to the answer he must give the Athenian envoys on his return. He undertook to receive the deputation in the presence of his host. Seeing that the treaty could not be carried out with honour to Athens, and refusing to have anything to do with it on any other terms, he insisted on conditions with the deputies which he knew they must reject. Peisandros lost patience, broke off the conference, and returned to Samos. There he declared amongst his friends and partisans that his belief was that Alkibiades had never really wished to aid the oligarchic rising, and that he was using his power with the satrap to destroy the oligarchic party. This bad news roused the clique to energy; they determined to act without him, and to invite their friends at Athens to do the same. For this purpose Peisandros set out with the ten deputies for Athens, recruiting a force of fighting men to help them on the way. To the amazement of Peisandros and his friends, when at last they reached Athens, they found the engine he had set to work had acted with a success beyond his expectations. The democracy as a governing body had disappeared. It was as though the earth had gaped and swallowed up its mountains, towns, and rivers. The face of everything was changed. Loathsome animalcules, crawling and breeding underground, waiting for a sign of weakness in the body politic, seeing their time was come, had risen to the surface of the soil and seized upon their victim. In her robust and healthy state they might have swarmed about her harmless till they were crushed or sent back to the dirt from which they had emerged. But the demos tottered from the moment it first listened to a possibility of compromise. When it allowed the suggestion of an abdication to go unpunished, the process of its abdication was begun. Assassins pounced upon the few strong men left, and disappeared in darkness, no one knew where. The rest were too frightened to inquire. Daggers grew bolder, and struck right and left. Panic set in. Men dared not to speak their thoughts. They knew not who was or was not in the plot.