History of the Peloponnesian War

but search was made for them, with great rewards for information offered at the public expense. Moreover, the people voted, that if any one knew any other act of impiety to have been committed, whoever wished, whether citizen, alien, or slave, should without fear give information of it. And they took the matter up more seriously [*]( Or the comparative may, perhaps, mean more seriously than they would have done under other circumstances. Or it may be used here, as in other places, with a force scarcely distinguishable from that of the positions) than it deserved;

for it was considered to be an omen of the expedition, and also to have been done on the strength of a conspiracy for bringing about a revolution, and for putting down the democracy.

Information therefore was given by some naturalized aliens, and slaves who were in personal attendance on their masters, though not at all respecting the Mercuries, yet of certain mutilations of other images which had before been perpetrated by some young men in a drunken frolic: and, moreover, that in certain private houses the mysteries were celebrated in mockery. In this charge they implicated Alcibiades;

and those took it up who were most hostile to him, as being an obstacle to their own taking the permanent lead of the people. Thinking therefore, that if they expelled him, they would have the first place, they magnified the business, and raised an out cry, to the effect that both the affair of the mysteries and the mutilation of the Mercuries had been done for the abolition of democracy; and that there was none of all these things that had been executed without his assistance: alleging in proof of the assertion his general contempt for the law in his personal habits, so opposed to the spirit of democracy.

He at once defended himself against these charges, and was ready to submit to trial, as to his being guilty of any of these things, before going on the expedition, (for by this time all things necessary for the armament had been provided,) and if he had done any of these things, he was willing to be punished; but if he were acquitted, to take the command.

He protested, too, that they should not listen to slanders against him in his absence, but put him to death at once if he were guilty; and that it was more prudent not to send him out at the head of so large an armament, with such an accusation attaching to him, before they had decided the question.