When the minds of weak men had been reduced to the required point of fear, the skulking conspirators, with Phrynichos at their head, and a professional rhetorician named Antiphon, came out, and by one final blow abolished, with the people’s trembling consent, the power of the people. They elected in its place a government of four hundred subservient tools, chosen beforehand by themselves. This was the new régime Peisandros found when he came back to Athens. Very different events were taking place at Samos. For a short time the oligarchic faction there attempted the same plan of action, and slew poor Hyperbolos, the potter. Poor Hyperbolos! One always feels inclined to laugh when his name is mentioned. Yet there must have been something in him. He rose above the common level both at home and at Samos. But his name sounds so absurd by the side of those great ones who had been ostracized before him that we can hardly help a smile. The hoplites stationed at Samos did not smile. They had a short time back listened for a moment to Peisandros, when he talked eloquently to them of the necessity of modifying somewhat their old form of government; but they never liked the notion of the change, and only tolerated it on the condition that Alkibiades was to come back to them, with or without the Persian fleet and Persian gold. It was the man they wanted more than the help of barbarous Persians. The healthy democrats of Samos did not long suffer oligarchic daggers to be used on them. Luckily two of the generals of the Athenian army there were democratic. The stirring times called forth two other men, of whom we shall hear a good deal before long—Thrasyboulos, captain of a trireme, and Thrasyllos, now only a soldier serving in the ranks. News of the attempted rising and its speedy overthrow was sent off to Athens by the _Paralos_, the other sacred state trireme, whose sturdy crew had given invaluable help in quelling the abortive Samian revolution. It was supposed that this good news would be joyously received at the Peiræus. One can imagine the astonishment of Chaireas, the captain, and the crew of the sacred ship, when they saw the change which had come over Athens, and found that they were, almost as prisoners, taken from the _Paralos_ and sent off on board another vessel to Euboia. Chaireas alone escaped, and after hiding at Athens for some time made his way back to Samos. There he painted before his fellow-countrymen in vivid, highly-coloured pictures the state of things at home, and how it had been brought about: the miserable condition of the people; the savage triumph of the oligarchs; no assembly of the people now, no tribunals to which the injured could appeal. The traitors, he said, were even making overtures to Sparta to come and sustain them in their power on the ruins of the state.