The famine was now king of Athens, dealing death out right and left on all classes, quite promiscuously, making little distinction between rich and poor, caring, it seemed, nothing at all for democrats or oligarchs. When Theramenes at length came back, he brought small consolation. He could not, for the life of him, make out what it was the Spartans wanted. He was sent back to make peace on any terms. Then, at length, he found out what it was she and her allies did really want. He found them in session deliberating on the doom of Athens. A Theban deputy, speaking for the Boiotians, demanded that the Athenians should be slaughtered man by man, or sold as slaves; that the walls of Athens and all her splendid temples and public buildings should be destroyed, and that grass should be sown where she had stood. The Korinthians concurred in this demand. The pride of Athens in her days of glory made them forget what she had done for them in times of trouble. Sparta alone remembered it, and she could recollect it because it served her purpose to remember it. She declared that a city which had once deserved so well of Greece must not be utterly destroyed. She wanted to reduce it to dependency upon herself, not to crush it. She wished to make a subject-city of Athens, with a Spartan garrison and a military governor ruling as her Viceroy. The other states did not want that. It would have made Lakedaimon as strong, and perhaps much more offensive than Athens had ever been. So they agreed upon a compromise, and settled the terms upon which peace might be given her. The fortifications of the Peiræus must be dismantled, the arsenals destroyed, the long walls, which she had built and cherished as her great security, must be pulled down. She must renounce all her possessions, own nothing out of Attika, give up her fleet, except such few ships as Lysandros might permit her to retain, and make alliance with Lakedaimon. When Theramenes brought these terrible, heart-rending terms and read them out before the Assembly in the Pnyx, first an awful silence fell upon the multitude, then sobs were heard, then someone rose on tottering legs to utter a weak protest. A few others tried to speak against them, muttering that a people such as they were should hold out still, and should die within the walls, rather than yield on such terms. But hunger had done its work. Theramenes was sent once more to Lysandros to tell him that the gates of Athens stood open to his forces. On an April day in 404, at the head of the allied armies, Lysandros made his entry into Athens. The last insults were inflicted on the miserable, vanquished citizens. Rude Spartan soldiers, dancing clumsily to the music which their women played upon their pipes, looked on and jested while free-born Athenians were made to toil with pick and spade at the destruction, stone by stone, of the strong defending walls.