Whilst Alcibiades resided with Tissaphernes, and gave the Persians the best instructions he could for regulating their conduct, he at the same time formed a scheme for procuring the repeal of his sentence, and liberty to return once more to his native country.[115] He judged the best way to obtain this favour would be to convince the Athenians of his intimacy with Tissaphernes. To effect this, he wrote to the chief officers of the Athenian forces, which then lay at Samos, directing them to inform all those of the greatest weight and authority how desirous he was of revisiting Athens if the government should be once lodged in the hands of a small number of the principal citizens; but that he could by no means think of returning whilst the democracy subsisted, and the state was governed by a parcel of abandoned wretches, who had so scandalously driven him out of his country. Upon that condition he promised to procure the friendship of Tissaphernes, and declared himself ready to accept a share with them in the administration. The event answered his expectations; for the officers and the leading men, both of the sea and land forces, which were at Samos, were eagerly bent upon subverting the democracy. Thus the treaty was set on foot at Samos, and the scheme laid for altering the government.[116] The principal men were in hopes of a share in the administration, and the inferior people acquiesced from the expectation of large subsidies from the Persians. Phrynicus, one of the generals, alone opposed it, sensible that Alcibiades cared as little for an aristocratick government as for a democracy, and had no other point in view (which, as Thucydides acknowledges, was the real truth) than to procure such a change in the present administration as might enable his friends to recall him. The terms, however, which Alcibiades offered, were agreed to by the rest, and Pisander, one of the leading men, was sent to Athens to manage the affair.[117]