Such was the condition to which things had been brought in Athens, by Antiphon and the oligarchical conspirators acting under his direction, at the time when Peisander and the five envoys arrived thither returning from Samos. It is probable that they had previously transmitted home from Samos news of the rupture with Alkibiadês, and of the necessity of prosecuting the conspiracy without farther view either to him or to the Persian alliance. Such news would probably be acceptable both to Antiphon and Phrynichus, both of them personal enemies of Alkibiadês; especially Phrynichus, who had pronounced him to be incapable of fraternizing with an oligarchical revolution.[41] At any rate, the plans of Antiphon had been independent of all view to Persian aid, and had been directed to carry the revolution by means of naked, exorbitant, and well-directed fear, without any intermixture of hope or any prospect of public benefit. Peisander found the reign of terror fully matured. He had not come direct from Samos to Athens, but had halted in his voyage at various allied dependencies, while the other five envoys, as well as a partisan named Diotrephês, had been sent to Thasos and elsewhere;[42] all for the same purpose, of putting down democracies in those allied cities where they existed, and establishing oligarchies in their room. Peisander made this change at Tênos, Andros, Karystus, Ægina, and elsewhere; collecting from these several places a regiment of three hundred hoplites, which he brought with him to Athens as a sort of body-guard to his new oligarchy.[43] He could not know until he reached Peiræus the full success of the terrorism organized by Antiphon and the rest; so that he probably came prepared to surmount a greater resistance than he actually found. As the facts stood, so completely had the public opinion and spirit been subdued, that he was enabled to put the finishing stroke at once, and his arrival was the signal for consummating the revolution, first, by an extorted suspension of the tutelary constitutional sanction, next, by the more direct employment of armed force. [41] Thucyd. viii. 68. νομίζων οὐκ ἄν ποτε αὐτὸν (Alkibiadês) κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ὑπ᾽ ὀλιγαρχίας κατελθεῖν, etc. [42] Thucyd. viii, 64. [43] Thucyd. viii, 65. Οἱ δὲ ἀμφὶ τὸν Πείσανδρον ~παραπλέοντές~ τε, ὥσπερ ἐδέδοκτο, ~τοὺς δήμους ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι κατέλυον~, καὶ ἅμα ~ἔστιν ἀφ᾽ ὧν χωρίων~ καὶ ὁπλίτας ἔχοντες σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ξυμμάχους ἦλθον ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας. Καὶ καταλαμβάνουσι τὰ πλεῖστα τοῖς ἑταίροις προειργασμένα. We may gather from c. 69 that the places which I have named in the text were among those visited by Peisander: all of them lay very much in his way from Samos to Athens.