I have recounted in my sixty-fifth chapter, the sixteen months of bitter suffering undergone by Athens immediately after her surrender. The loss of her fleet and power was aggravated by an extremity of internal oppression. Her oligarchical party and her exiles, returning after having served with the enemy against her, extorted from the public assembly, under the dictation of Lysander who attended it in person, the appointment of an omnipotent council of thirty for the ostensible purpose of framing a new constitution. These thirty rulers,—among whom Kritias was the most violent, and Theramenes (seemingly) the most moderate, or at least the soonest satiated,—perpetrated cruelty and spoliation on the largest scale, being protected against all resistance by a Lacedæmonian harmost and garrison established in the acropolis. Besides numbers of citizens put to death, so many others were driven into exile with the loss of their property, that Thebes and the neighboring cities became crowded with them. After about eight months of unopposed tyranny, the Thirty found themselves for the first time attacked by Thrasybulus at the head of a small party of these exiles coming out of Bœotia. His bravery and good conduct,—combined with the enormities of the Thirty, which became continually more nefarious, and to which even numerous oligarchical citizens, as well as Theramenes himself, successively became victims,—enabled him soon to strengthen himself, to seize the Peiræus, and to carry on a civil war which ultimately put down the tyrants.