History of the Peloponnesian War

And Leon and Diomedon, whensoever they went forth any whither, left them certain galleys for their guard, so that when the three hundred assaulted them, the commons of the Samians, with the help of all these, and especially of the Paralians, had the upperhand, and of the three hundred slew thirty. Three of the chief authors they banished, and burying in oblivion the fault of the rest, governed the state from that time forward as a democracy.

The Paralus, and in it Chaereas, the son of Archestratus, a man of Athens, one that had been forward in the making of this change, the Samians and the soldiers dispatched presently away to Athens, to advertise them of what was done; for they knew not yet that the government was in the hands of The Four Hundred.

When they arrived, The Four Hundred cast some two or three of these of the Paralus into prison; the rest, after they had taken the galley from them and put them aboard another military galley, they commanded to keep guard about Euboea.

But Chaereas, by some means or other getting presently away, seeing how things went, came back to Samos and related to the army all that the Athenians had done, aggravating it to the utmost, as that they punished every man with stripes to the end that none should contradict the doings of those that bore rule; and that their wives and children at home were abused; and that they had an intention further to take and imprison all that were of kin to any of the army which was not of their faction, to the intent to kill them if they of Samos would not submit to their authority. And many other things he told them, adding lies of his own.

When they heard this, they were ready at first to have fallen upon the chief authors of the oligarchy and upon such of the rest as were partakers of it. Yet afterwards, being hindered by such as came between and advised them not to overthrow the state, the enemy lying so near with their galleys to assault them, they gave it over.