History of the Peloponnesian War

Now Theramenes had been freely talking about these proceedings for some time, and after the ambassadors came back from Lacedaemon without having accomplished anything toward an agreement for the people as a whole, he kept saying that this fort would in all probability bring ruin upon the city.

For at this very time it so happened that, on the invitation of the Euboeans, ships from the Peloponnesus to the number of forty-two, among which were Italian vessels from Tarentum and Locri and some from Sicily, were already lying off Las in Laconia and preparing for their passage to Euboea, under the command of Hegesandridas son of Hegesander, a Spartan; and Theramenes declared that these were on their way, not to Euboea, but to Eetioneia to help the men who were fortifying it, adding that unless they immediately took precautions their cause would be lost before they knew it.

And in fact there was something of the kind afoot on the part of those whom he thus accused, and what he said was not altogether mere calumny. For the persons in question wished above all, preserving their oligarchy, to rule both Athens and the allies, but, failing in that, to keep their ships at least and their fortifications and be independent; and if they were debarred from this course also, at any rate not to be themselves the first to meet with destruction at the hands of the restored democracy, but actually to bring in the enemy and, giving up walls and ships, make any sort of terms as to the fate of the city, if only they might have immunity for their own persons.

It was with this object in view that they were now diligently building this fort, which was furnished with posterns and entrances and ways for letting the enemy in, and they wished to have it finished in time.

Now hitherto the talk had been confined to small groups and indulged in with some attempt at secrecy; but finally Phrynichus, after his return from his mission to Lacedaemon, was stabbed in full market as the result of a plot by a man of the frontier-patrol, and before he had gone far from the senate-chamber suddenly died. The assassin escaped, while his accomplice, an Argive fellow, was seized and put to the torture by the Four Hundred, but did not reveal the name of anyone who instigated the deed nor anything else, except that he knew many who were wont to come together in the house of the commander of the frontier-patrol and at other houses. So now at length, when no signal action had been taken in consequence of this, Theramenes and Aristocrates and all the rest of the Four Hundred and those outside that body who were of the same way of thinking, went to work more boldly.