History of the Peloponnesian War

When the envoys led by Peisander had come to Samos from Tissaphernes, they had got matters in the army itself still more firmly under their control and had instigated the influential men among the Samians also to attempt in concert with them to establish an oligarchy, although the Samians had risen in revolt against their own countrymen in order to avoid being governed by an oligarchy.

At the same time the Athenians at Samos, after conferring among themselves, had determined, since Alcibiades would not agree with them, to let him alone—for he was not a suitable person, they thought, to come into an oligarchy—but by themselves, as being already actually in peril, to see to it that the movement should not be abandoned, and at the same time to hold out so far as the war was concerned; they had also resolved zealously to contribute from their own private resources either money or whatever else should be necessary, feeling that from now on the burdens they would bear would be for no others than themselves.1

Having thus encouraged one another, they at once proceeded to send Peisander and half of the envoys home in order to arrange matters there, but also with instructions to establish oligarchies in any of the subject cities at which they should stop; the other half they sent to the rest of the subject countries, some to one and some to another;

and Dieitrephes, who was in the neighbourhood of Chios but had been elected to have command on the coast of Thrace, they sent to his post. When he reached Thasos he abolished the democracy there.

About two months, however, after his departure the Thasians fortified their city, feeling that they no longer had any need of an aristocracy attached to Athens and daily looking for freedom to be given them by the Lacedaemonians.