History of the Peloponnesian War

Having thus encouraged one another, they at once proceeded to send Peisander and half of the envoys home in order to arrange matters there, but also with instructions to establish oligarchies in any of the subject cities at which they should stop; the other half they sent to the rest of the subject countries, some to one and some to another;

and Dieitrephes, who was in the neighbourhood of Chios but had been elected to have command on the coast of Thrace, they sent to his post. When he reached Thasos he abolished the democracy there.

About two months, however, after his departure the Thasians fortified their city, feeling that they no longer had any need of an aristocracy attached to Athens and daily looking for freedom to be given them by the Lacedaemonians.

For there were Thasian fugitives, who had been expelled by the Athenians, now present with the Peloponnesians, and these, in concert with their friends in the city, were working with might and main to bring ships and effect the revolt of Thasos. They found, therefore, that the things they most desired had happened-the city had been brought to order and the democracy that would have opposed them had been abolished.

In Thasos, then, the result was the opposite of what the Athenians who were establishing the oligarchy there desired, and it was the same, as it seems to me, in many others of the subject states; for the cities, having acquired soberness of spirit and immunity in carrying out their designs, aimed at downright freedom, caring nothing for the hollow sham of law and order offered by the Athenians.