History of the Peloponnesian War

On their sailing into harbour, the Four Hundred immediately threw some two or three of the crew into prison, and having taken their vessel from them, and removed them into another employed as a troop-ship, they set them to keep guard round Euboea. Chaereas, by some means or other, immediately secreted himself;

and when he saw the present state of things, he went back to Samos, and took the soldiers an exaggerated report of affairs at Athens, aggravating every thing, and telling them that

they were punishing all with stripes, and it was impossible to speak a word against those who held the government; moreover, that their wives and children were outraged, and that they intended to seize and confine all the relatives of such as were in the army at Samos and not on their own side, in order that, if they would not submit to them, the prisoners might be put to death:

On hearing this, they were at first strongly inclined to make an attack on those who had been the chief authors of the oligarchy, and such of the rest as had taken part in it. Afterwards, however, being prevented by the men of moderate views, and warned not to ruin their cause, while the enemy were lying so near them with their ships ready for action, they desisted from it.

After this, wishing openly now to change the government at Samos to a democracy, Thrasybulus the son of Lycus, and Thrasylus, (for these were the chief leaders in the revolution,) bound all the soldiers, and, most of all, the oligarchical party themselves, by the most solemn oaths, that they would assuredly be governed by a democracy, and live in concord; and also that they would zealously prosecute the war with the Peloponnesians. and would be foes to the Four Hundred, and hold no intercourse with them.