Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/48

26 HISTORY OF GREECE. After the breach with Alkibiades, and still more after this manifest reconciliation of Tissaphernes with the Peloponnesians, Peisander and the oligarchical conspirators at Samos had to reconsider their plan of action. They would not have begun the movement at first, had they not been instigated by Alkibiades, and furnished by him with the treacherous delusion of Persian alliance to cheat and paralyze the people. They had, indeed, motives enough, from their own personal ambition, to originate it of themselves, apart from Alkibiades; but without the hopes equally useful for their purpose, whether false or true con- nected with his name, they would have had no chance of achieving the first step. Now, however, that first step had been achieved, before the delusive expectation of Persian gold was dissipated. The Athenian people had been familiarized with the idea of a subversion of their constitution, in consideration of a certain price : it remained to extort from them at the point of the sword, without paying the price, what they had thus consented to sell. 1 Moreover, the leaders of the scheme felt themselves already compromised, so that they could not recede with safety. They had set in motion their partisans at Athens, where the system of murderous intimidation, though the news had not as yet reaohed Samos, was already in full swing : so that they felt con- strained to persevere, as the only chance of preservation to themselves. At the same time, all that faint pretence of public benefit, in the shape of Persian alliance, which had been originally attached to it, and which might have been conceived to enlist in the scheme some timid patriots, was now entirely withdrawn ; and nothing remained except a naked, selfish, and unscrupulous scheme of ambition, not only ruining the freedom of Athens at home, but crippling and imperiling her before the foreign enemy, at a moment when her entire strength was scarcely adequate to the contest. The conspirators resolved to persevere, at all haz- ards, both in breaking down the constitution and in carrying on the foreign war. Most of them being rich men, they were con- ' See Aristotel. Politic, v, 3, &. He cites this revolution as an instance of one begun by deceit and afterwards consummated by force : olov i~l ruv TETpaKoaiuv -rbv 67/fiov i^ijiraTTjaav, QuaKovree, rbv jBaau.ta nape&iv Trpbf TOV Tiofofiov rbv Trobf AaKfdatfioviovf ij-fvact/jEvot c'e.