 The ancient historian Thucydides mentions that there was already a suspicion of a plot to overthrow the democracy before the battle of Tanagra in 457 BC and rumours of a conspiracy to replace the Athenian democracy just before the Sicilian expedition in 415 BC.Such was the attachment to the traditional full democracy and the recognition of its general support, that despite the perceived foolishness of military and fiscal policies, incompetence in seeing them through, the vacuum of respectable leadership, the terrible fiscal burden placed upon them, and the fear of total annihilation, it was not the aristocrats of Athens who instigated the 411 BC coup.Instead, the idea was instigated from outside the city, by Alcibiades.