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So the people speedily took the government out of these men's hands; and in the sixth1 year after the dissolution of the Four Hundred, in the archonship of Callias of the deme of Angele, after the occurrence of the naval battle at Arginusae, it came about first that the ten Generals to whom victory in the naval battle was due were all condemned by a single vote, some of them not even having been in the engagement at all and the others having escaped on board a ship not their own, the people being completely deceived through the persons who provoked their anger; and then, when the Lacedaemonians were willing to evacuate Decelea on terms of both parties retaining what they held, and to make peace, though some persons were eager to accept, yet the mass of the people refused to consent, being completely deceived by Cleophon, who prevented the conclusion of peace by coming into the assembly, drunk and wearing a corslet,2 and protesting that he would not allow it unless the Lacedaemonians surrendered all the cities.3
1 'Sixth' (in Greek arithmetic 'seventh') is a mistake for 'fifth' (Greek 'sixth'): the Four Hundred fell in 411, Callias was archon 406 B.C.
2 i.e. with his courage artificially stimulated and with armor to protect him against assassination (unless we adopt the conjecture that μεθύων καὶ θώρακα ἐνδεδυκώς is a mistaken paraphrase of some original record giving θώρακα ἔχων in the slang sense of 'well primed with liquor,' cf. Aristoph. Frogs 1504).
3 i.e. those that they had taken in the war.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 20, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1952.
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