In the capitulation on which Athens surrendered, so far as its terms are reported by Xenophon, no mention appears to have been made of any change which was to take place in its form of government; and, if we might believe Diodorus, one article expressly provided, that the Athenians should enjoy their hereditary constitution. This is probably an error; but if such language was used in the treaty it was apparently designed rather to insult than to deceive the people; and the framers of the article, who were also to be its expounders, had in their view not the free constitution under which the city had flourished since the time of Solon, but some ancient form of misrule, which had been long forgotten, but might still be recovered from oblivion by the industry of such antiquarians as Nicomachus. It is at least not to be doubted that the Spartan government, if it did not stipulate for the subversion of the democracy, looked forward to such a revolution as one of the most certain and important results of its victory. But it may have believed that its Athenian partisans would be strong enough to effect it without its interference. And we gather from a statement of Lysias, which Xenophon does not contradict, that Lysander, after he had seen the demolition of the walls begun, leaving his friends to complete their work, sailed away to Samos, now the only place in the Ægean where the authority of Sparta was not acknowledged.