Against Alcibiades: For Deserting the Ranks

LawYou hear, gentlemen, how it covers both alike,—those who retreat to the rear during battle, and those who do not appear in the infantry lines. And consider who they are that are bound to appear. Are they not all persons who have reached the proper age? Are they not those whom the generals have enrolled?

I believe, gentlemen, that he is the one citizen who is liable to the full scope of the law: for he would with justice be convicted of refusing duty, because after being enrolled as a foot-soldier he did not march out with you; of desertion, because he alone of the whole force did not present himself for the formation of the ranks; and of cowardice, because, when it was his duty to share the danger with the infantry, he chose to serve in the cavalry.

They say, indeed, that he will resort to the defence that, since he was in the cavalry, he was doing no wrong to the State. But in my opinion you would find just cause for indignation against him in the fact that, although the law provides that anyone who serves in the cavalry without having passed his scrutiny[*](Held by the Council in order to maintain a high class of manhood in the cavalry.) shall be disfranchised, he had the audacity to serve in the cavalry without having passed his scrutiny. Now, please, read the law.

LawThis man, then, carried roguery to such a length, and was so contemptuous of you and so timorous of the enemy, so desirous of serving in the cavalry and so heedless of our laws, that he recked nought of the risks involved, and preferred the prospect of being disfranchised, having his property confiscated and being liable to all the statutory penalties, to that of taking his place with the citizens and serving as an infantryman.

There were others who had never before served in the infantry, but had always been cavalrymen and had inflicted many losses on the enemy: yet they did not venture to mount their horses, from fear of you and of the law. For they had shaped their plans on the prospect, not of the city’s destruction, but of its deliverance, its ascendancy and its retaliation upon wrongdoers. But Alcibiades was rash enough to mount, though he is no supporter of the people, nor had seen service in the cavalry before, nor is qualified for it now, nor had passed your scrutiny: he presumed that the city would be without the power to do justice upon wrongdoers.

You must reflect that, if men are to be permitted to do whatever they please, it is useless to have your code of laws, your Assemblies, or your election of generals. And I wonder, gentlemen, at anyone considering it right, when a man has retired, at the approach of the enemy, from his post in the first rank to a place in the second, to convict him of cowardice, and then, if a man has appeared in the cavalry when his post was in the infantry, to grant him a pardon!

And besides, gentlemen, I conceive that your judgement is given, not merely with a view to the offenders, but also for the reformation of all other insubordinate persons. Now, if you punish men who are unknown, not one among the rest will be improved; for nobody will know the sentences that you have passed: but if you inflict the penalty on the most conspicuous offenders, everyone will be apprised, and so the citizens, with this example before them, will be improved.