Against Alcibiades: For Deserting the Ranks

Yet it is a constant habit of his to say that it is unfair, when his father on returning home received gifts from the people,[*](In 407 B.C., when he was welcomed back to a brief popularity on the strength of his friendship with the Persian satrap Tissaphernes.) that he should find himself unjustly discredited on account of his father’s exile. But in my opinion it would be monstrous if, after depriving the father of those gifts as having been unjustly bestowed, you should acquit this man, though a wrongdoer, on the ground of good service done to the city by his father.

And then, gentlemen of the jury, besides other abundant reasons for which he ought to be convicted, there is the fact that he takes your valorous conduct as a precedent to justify his own baseness. For he has the audacity to say that Alcibiades has done nothing outrageous in marching against his native land,

since you in your exile occupied Phyle, cut down trees and assaulted the walls, and by these acts of yours, instead of bequeathing disgrace to your children, you won honor in the eyes of all the world; as though there were no difference in the deserts of men who used their exile to march in the ranks of the enemy against their country, and those who strove for their return while the Lacedaemonians held the city!

And again, I think it must be obvious to all that these others sought to return that they might surrender the command of the sea to the Lacedaemonians, and gain the command of you for themselves; whereas your democracy, on its return, expelled the enemy and liberated even those of our citizens who desired to be slaves. So that there is no such parallel between the actions of the two parties as he seeks to draw.

But despite the many grievous disasters that are upon his head he prides himself on his father’s villainy, and tells us that the man was so mighty that he has been the author of all the troubles that have befallen our city. And yet, what man is there so ignorant of his own country’s affairs that cannot, if he chooses to be a villain, inform the enemy of the positions that ought to be occupied, point out the forts that are ill-guarded, instruct them in the weaknesses of the State, and indicate the allies who desire to secede?[*](Cf. the treachery of Alcibiades recorded by Thuc. 8.6.12.)