Samian, and had, moreover, been in banishment during the last five or six years, he could have had no power either in the island or the armament, and therefore his death served no prospective purpose. But he represented the demagogic and accusatory eloquence of the democracy, the check upon official delinquency; so that he served as a common object of antipathy to Athenian and Samian oligarchs. Some of the Athenian partisans, headed by Charmînus, one of the generals, in concert with the Samian conspirators, seized Hyperbolus and put him to death, seemingly with some other victims at the same time.[32] [32] Thucyd. viii, 73. Καὶ Ὑπέρβολόν τέ τινα τῶν Ἀθηναίων, μοχθηρὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὠστρακισμένον οὐ διὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἀξιώματος φόβον, ἀλλὰ διὰ πονηρίαν καὶ αἰσχύνην τῆς πόλεως, ἀποκτείνουσι μετὰ Χαρμίνου τε ἑνὸς τῶν στρατηγῶν καί τινων τῶν παρὰ σφίσιν Ἀθηναίων, πίστιν διδόντες αὐτοῖς, ~καὶ ἄλλα μετ᾽ αὐτῶν τοιαῦτα ξυνέπραξαν~, τοῖς τε πλείοσιν ὥρμηντο ἐπιτίθεσθαι. I presume that the words, ἄλλα τοιαῦτα ξυνέπραξαν, must mean that other persons were assassinated along with Hyperbolus. The incorrect manner in which Mr. Mitford recounts these proceedings at Samos has been properly commented on by Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Gr. ch. xxviii, vol. iv, p. 30). It is the more surprising, since the phrase μετὰ Χαρμίνου, which Mr. Mitford has misunderstood, is explained in a special note of Duker. But though these joint assassinations served as a pledge to each section of the conspirators for the fidelity of the other, in respect to farther operations, they at the same time gave warning to opponents. Those leading men at Samos who remained attached to the democracy, looking abroad for defence against the coming attack, made earnest appeal to Leon and Diomedon, the two generals most recently arrived from Athens in substitution for Phrynichus and Skironidês,—men sincerely devoted to the democracy, and adverse to all oligarchical change, as well as to the trierarch Thrasyllus, to Thrasybulus, son of Lykus, then serving as an hoplite, and to many others of the pronounced democrats and patriots in the Athenian armament. They made appeal not simply in behalf of their own personal safety and of their own democracy, now threatened by conspirators of whom a portion were Athenians, but also on grounds of public interest to Athens; since, if Samos became oligarchized, its sympathy with the Athenian democracy and its fidelity to the alliance would be at an end. At this moment the most recent events which had occurred at Athens, presently to be told, were not known, and the democracy was considered as still subsisting there.[33] [33] Thucyd. viii, 73, 74. οὐκ ἠξίουν περιϊδεῖν αὐτοὺς σφᾶς τε διαφθαρέντας, καὶ Σάμον Ἀθηναίοις ἀλλοτριωθεῖσαν, etc. ... οὐ γὰρ ᾔδεσάν πω τοὺς τετρακοσίους ἄρχοντας, etc.