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Sparta, it was put under an oligarchy, which meant Spartan control. About the year 396 B.C. the Athenian general Conon, who had a powerful fleet in the Ægean, again forced the Rhodians to become the allies of Athens. Four years afterwards a Spartan fleet appeared, and this was the signal for another revolution in the government. There was, it seems, one of those horrible incidents with which Greek history is so often disfigured—a massacre of the democratic leaders and of the adherents of Athens. But the oligarchy now imposed on the island did not last long. The Spartan fleet was defeated, and Rhodes and most of the islands of the Ægean returned to the Athenian alliance. We may take for granted that democracy was re-established. Then came, in 358 B.C., the Social War, the war between Athens and her allies, which broke up the second Athenian empire. Of this, Rhodes was the origin. Chares, the Athenian general, of whom we have already had occasion to speak, provoked and disgusted the Rhodians by plunder and extortion. Cos and Chios had similar grievances; and the three islands threw off their connection with Athens, and began the Social War—Rhodes being the prime mover. They were helped by Mausolus, king of Caria and a vassal prince of the Persian empire. He was a man of considerable ambition, and his idea was to annex Rhodes, which was adjacent to his own territories. It was first necessary to detach it from the Athenian alliance; and Mausolus contrived, by intrigues with the oligarchical party in the island, to introduce a Carian garrison; and once more the government was revolutionised. The