Against this popular opposition, Antiphon and Phrynichus exerted themselves, with demagogic assiduity, to caress and keep together the majority of the Four Hundred, as well as to uphold their power without abridgment. They were noway disposed to comply with this requisition that the fiction of the Five Thousand should be converted into a reality. They knew well that the enrollment of so many partners[80] would be tantamount to a democracy, and would be, in substance at least, if not in form, an annihilation of their own power. They had now gone too far to recede with safety; while the menacing attitude of Samos, as well as the opposition growing up against them at home, both within and without their own body, served only as instigation to them to accelerate their measures for peace with Sparta, and to secure the introduction of a Spartan garrison. [80] Thucyd. viii, 92. τὸ μὲν καταστῆσαι μετόχους τοσούτους, ἄντικρυς ἂν δῆμον ἡγούμενοι, etc. Aristotle (Polit. v, 5, 4) calls Phrynichus the _demagogue_ of the Four Hundred; that is, the person who most strenuously served _their_ interests and struggled for _their_ favor. With this view, immediately after the return of their envoys from Samos, the two most eminent leaders, Antiphon and Phrynichus, went themselves with ten other colleagues in all haste to Sparta, prepared to purchase peace and the promise of Spartan aid almost at any price. At the same time, the construction of the fortress at Ectioneia was prosecuted with redoubled zeal; under pretence of defending the entrance of Peiræus against the armament from Samos, if the threat of their coming should be executed, but with the real purpose of bringing into it a Lacedæmonian fleet and army. For this latter object every facility was provided. The northwestern corner of the fortification of Peiræus, to the north of the harbor and its mouth, was cut off by a cross wall reaching southward so as to join the harbor: from the southern end of this cross wall, and forming an angle with it, a new wall was built, fronting the harbor and running to the extremity of the mole which narrowed the mouth of the harbor on the northern side, at which mole it met the termination of the northern wall of Peiræus. A separate citadel was thus inclosed, defensible against any attack either from Peiræus or from the harbor; furnished, besides, with distinct broad gates and posterns of its own, as well as with facilities for admitting an enemy within it.[81] The new cross wall was carried so as to traverse a vast portico, or open market-house, the largest in Peiræus: the larger half of this portico thus became inclosed within the new citadel; and orders were issued that all the corn, both actually warehoused and hereafter to be imported into Peiræus, should be deposited therein and sold out from thence for consumption. As Athens was sustained almost exclusively on corn brought from Eubœa and elsewhere, since