Against Alcibiades: For Deserting the Ranks

For if during his exile it was his power that enabled him to injure the city, how was it that, having obtained his return by deceiving you and being in command of many ships of war, he had not power enough to expel the enemy from our land or to regain for you the friendship of the Chians whom he had alienated, or to do you any other useful service?

Thus there is no difficulty in concluding that on the score of power he had no particular advantage, but that in foul play he stood first of his fellows. For he took upon him to indicate to the Lacedaemonians the points in your affairs which he knew to be in a bad way; but, when he had the duty of holding the command, he was powerless to do them any harm. After undertaking that, for his sake, the king would provide us with money, he embezzled more than two hundred talents of our city’s funds.

So sensible was he of his numerous offences against you that, for all his power of speech, his friends, and his acquisition of wealth, he never once ventured to come under an inquiry, but condemned himself to exile, and preferred to become a citizen of Thrace and any sort of city rather than belong to his own native land. Finally, gentlemen, he outdid his former villainy by daring, with Adeimantus, to surrender the ships to Lysander.[*](The fact rather is that Alcibiades tried to warn the Athenian commanders of the danger of their being surprised at Aegospotami (405 b.c.).)

So, if anyone among you feels pity for those who lost their lives in the sea-fight, or is ashamed for those who were enslaved by the enemy, or resents the destruction of the walls, or hates the Lacedaemonians, or feels anger against the Thirty, he should hold this man’s father responsible for all these things, and reflect that it was Alcibiades, his great-grand-father, and Megacles, his father’s grandfather on the mother’s side, whom your ancestors ostracized,[*](The famous Alcibiades was the son of Cleinias (son of Alcibiades, opponent of the Peisistratids, 510 b.c.), and Deinomache (daughter of Megacles, supporter of the Peisistratid party, 486 b.c.). The people once a year could vote for the expulsion of one citizen from the city, by writing his name on a potsherd (ὄστρακον).) both of them twice, and that the older among you have condemned his father to death.

Wherefore you ought now to condemn this man as one whom you have judged to be a hereditary enemy of the city, and to set neither pity nor forgiveness nor any favour above the established laws and the oaths that you have sworn.