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Meanwhile the leaders and members of the Four Hundred most opposed to a democratic form of government Phrynichus who had had the quarrel with Alcibiades during his command at Samos, Aristarchus the bitter and inveterate enemy of the commons, and Pisander and Antiphon and others of the chiefs who already as soon as they entered upon power, and again when the army at Samos seceded from them and declared for a democracy, had sent envoys from their own body to Lacedaemon and made every effort for peace, and had built the wall in Eetionia now redoubled their exertions when their envoys returned from Samos, and they saw not only the people but their own most trusted associates turning against them.
But Aristides sending to Delphi, the god answered, that the Athenians should overcome their enemies, in case they made supplication to Jupiter and Juno of Cithaeron, Pan, and the nymphs Sphragitides, and sacrificed to the heroes Androcrates, Leucon, Pisander, Damocrates, Hypsion, Actaeon, and Polyidus; and if they fought within their own territories in the plain of Ceres Eleusinia and Proserpine.
Leave all to me. If you learn anything new, send word to the house of Lentulus Crus, and ask to see me. And now I must forsake this pleasant wine untasted, and hurry away. My mistress will bless you, and perhaps there will be some reward." And leaving the bewildered Pisander to wipe the wine from his dress, Agias had darted out of the tavern, and was lost in the hurly-burly of the cattle-market.
But when one doesn't make use of what Fortune has given him, there is nothing else to do!" "Yes," said Pratinas, sententiously. "He who fails to realize what is for him the highest good, forfeits, thereby, the right to life itself." Pisander slipped away from the keyhole, with a white face, and panting for breath. Briefly, he repeated what he had gathered to Arsinoë, then blurted out:
"I will go in and meet that well-oiled villain face to face. By Zeus! I will make him feel the depths of an honest man's scorn and indignation!" "You will be a fool," replied Arsinoë, quietly, "if you do. Valeria would instantly dismiss you from her service." "I will go at once to Drusus," asserted Pisander.
But when the day appointed for that purpose arrived, the assembly was not convened in the Pnyx, but in the temple of Poseidon at Colonus, a village upwards of a mile from Athens. Here the conspirators could plant their own partisans, and were less liable to be overawed by superior numbers. Pisander obtained the assent of the meeting to the following revolutionary changes: 1.
"Take this wretched boy," cried Valeria, spurning Agias with her foot; "take him away. Make an example of him. Take him out beyond the Porta Esquilina and whip him to death. Let me never see him again." Pisander sprang up in his corner, quivering with righteous wrath. "What is this?" he cried. "The lad is not guilty of any real crime.
That part of the Samian population which has been mentioned as rising against the upper class, and as being the democratic party, had now turned round, and yielding to the solicitations of Pisander during his visit, and of the Athenians in the conspiracy at Samos, had bound themselves by oaths to the number of three hundred, and were about to fall upon the rest of their fellow citizens, whom they now in their turn regarded as the democratic party.
He received the Athenian deputation in the presence of Tissaphernes himself, and made such extravagant demands on behalf of the satrap that Pisander and his colleagues indignantly broke off the conference. Notwithstanding the conduct of Alcibiades the oligarchical conspirators proceeded with the revolution at Athens, in which they had gone too far to recede.
"You can do much, my lady," replied Agias, kindly taking her by the hand, and with gentle pressure forcing her to sit on the divan. "You can do what neither I, nor Pisander, nor any one else can accomplish. You can make Lucius Ahenobarbus betray his own plot. You, and you only, can penetrate the final plans of the conspirators. Therefore be strong, and do not despair."
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