History of the Peloponnesian War

By this course, though it was doubtful whether those who suffer: had been punished unjustly or not, yet the rest of the community were manifestly benefited.

With regard to Alcibiades, the Athenians took a severe view of the case, being instigated by his enemies, the same men as had also attacked him before his going on the expedition. And when they fancied they were in possession of the truth respecting the Mercuries, they thought much more than ever that the affair of the mysteries also, in which he was implicated, had been done by him with the same design, and in connexion with the plot against the democracy.

For a small force of Lacedaemonians happened too, just at the time when they were in commotion on these subjects, to have advanced as far as the Isthmus, in pursuance of some scheme with the Boeotians. They thought therefore that it had come by agreement, through his agency, and not on account of the Boeotians; and that if they had not, in consequence of the information they had received, been beforehand in the arrest of the party, the city would have been betrayed to them.

One night indeed they even slept in arms in the temple of Theseus within the walls. The friends, too, of Alcibiades at Argos were at the same time suspected of a design to attack the popular government; and those persons of the Argives who had been deposited in the islands the Athenians on that occasion gave up to the Argive commons to put to death on that account.