History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

The people, hearing of the oligarchy, took it very heinously at first; but when Pisander had proved evidently that there was no other way of safety, in the end, partly for fear and partly because they hoped again to change the government, they yielded thereunto.

So they ordered that Pisander and ten others should go and treat both with Tissaphernes and Alcibiades as to them should seem best.

Withal, upon the accusation of Pisander against Phrynichus, they discharged both Phrynichus and Scironides, his fellow-commissioner, of their command, and made Diomedon and Leon generals of the fleet in their places. Now the cause why Pisander accused Phrynichus and said he had betrayed Iasus and Amorges was only this: he thought him a man unfit for the business now in hand with Alcibiades.

Pisander, after he had gone about to all those combinations (which were in the city before for obtaining of places of judicature and of command), exhorting them to stand together and advise about deposing the democracy, and when he had dispatched the rest of his business so as there should be no more cause for him to stay there, took sea with those other ten to go to Tissaphernes.