History of the Peloponnesian War

And they were already beginning to form groups and criticize the state of affairs, having as their leaders some of the very men who were members of the oligarchy and held office, such as Theramenes son of Hagnon, Aristocrates son of Scelias, and others. These had been among the foremost of those who had taken an active part in the revolution, but being afraid in real earnest, as they said, of the army at Samos and of Alcibiades, as well as of those who were sending envoys to Lacedaemon, who they thought might, by acting without the sanction of the greater number, work some harm to the city, they did not indeed openly profess that they wanted to avoid reducing the government to an extreme oligarchy, but maintained that they ought to appoint the Five Thousand in fact and not merely in name, and to establish the government on the basis of a greater equality.