12
Thus equipped, the forces in Samos went on to defeat the Peloponnesians at seaMost probably the battle of Cyzicus, April 410. See Introd.; and it was they, and they alone who saved Athens at the time. Now if those heroes rendered you true service by their deed, I may fairly claim that that service was in no small degree due to me. Had that army not been furnished with supplies just then, they would have been fighting not so much to save Athens as to save their own lives.
13
In these circumstances, I was not a little surprised at the situation which I found at Athens. I returned thither fully expecting the congratulations of the city on the active way in which I had displayed my devotion to your interests. Instead, directly they learned of my arrival, certain of the Four Hundred sought me out, arrested me, and brought me before the Council.i.e. their fellow-members of the Four Hundred. The Council proper had been superseded.
14
Whereupon PeisanderFor the career of Peisander see Andoc. 1.36 note. at once came up, took his stand beside me, and cried: Gentlemen, I hereby denounce this man as having supplied corn and oar-spars to the enemy. Then he went on to tell the whole story. By this time, of course, it was clear that there had been a complete estrangement between the men on service and the Four Hundred.
15
I saw the uproar into which the meeting was breaking, and knew that I was lost; so I sprang at once to the hearth and laid hold of the sacred emblems. That act, and that alone, was my salvation at the time; for although I stood disgraced in the eyes of the gods,Owing to his participation in the mutilation of the Hermae four years before. they, it seems, had more pity on me than did men; when men were desirous of putting to death, it was the gods who saved my life. My subsequent imprisonment and the extent and nature of the bodily suffering to which I was subjected would take too long to describe.
