And this was indeed the form pretended in words by The Four Hundred. But the most of them, through private ambition, fell upon that by which an oligarchy made out of a democracy is chiefly overthrown. For at once they claimed every one not to be equal but to be far the chief. Whereas in a democracy, when election is made, because a man is not overcome by his equals, he can better brook it.
But those of The Four Hundred that were most opposite to such a form of government, and the principal of them, both Phrynichus, who had been general at Samos and was ever since at difference with Alcibiades, and Aristarchus, a man that had been an adversary to the people both in the greatest manner and for the longest time, and Pisander and Antiphon, and others of the greatest power, not only formerly, as soon as they entered into authority and afterwards when the state at Samos revolted to the people, sent ambassadors to Lacedaemon and bestirred themselves for the oligarchy, and built a wall in the place called Eetioneia; but much more afterwards, when their ambassadors were come from Samos and that they saw not only the populars but also some others of their own party, thought trusty before, to be now changed.