Concerning the Team of Horses (6-10)

And since they knew that in matters pertaining to the gods the city would be most enraged if any man should be shown to be violating the Mysteries,[*] and that in other matters if any man should dare to attempt the overthrow of the democracy, they combined both these charges and tried to bring an action of impeachment before the senate. They asserted that my father was holding meetings of his political club with a view to revolution, and that these members of the club, when dining together in the house of Pulytion,[*] had given a performance of the Mysteries.

The city was greatly excited by reason of the gravity of the charges, and a meeting of the Assembly was hastily called at which my father so clearly proved that the accusers were lying that the people would have been glad to punish them, and furthermore elected him general for the Sicilian expedition.[*] Thereupon he sailed away, judging that he had been already cleared of their calumnies; but his accusers, having united the Council and having made the public speakers subservient to themselves, again revived the matter and suborned informers.

Why need I say more? They did not cease until they had recalled my father from the expedition and had put to death some of his friends and had banished others from the city. But when he had learned the power of his enemies and the misfortunes of his friends, although he was of opinion that he was being grossly wronged because they would not try him when he was in Athens but were for condemning him in his absence, not even in these circumstances did my father see fit to desert to the enemy;

on the contrary, even in exile he was so scrupulous to avoid injuring his city that he went to Argos and remained quietly there. But his enemies reached such a pitch of insolence that they persuaded you to banish him from Greece entirely, to inscribe his name on a column as a traitor, and to send envoys to demand his surrender by the Argives. And he, being at a loss to know what to do in the misfortunes which encompassed him and everywhere hemmed him in, as he saw no other means of safety, was compelled at last to take refuge with the Lacedaemonians.

These are the actual facts; but such an excess of insolence have my father’s enemies that they accuse him, who was exiled in so illegal a manner as if he had committed outrageous crimes, and try to ruin his reputation by saying that he caused the fortification of Decelea,[*] and the revolt of the islands, and that he became the enemy’s counsellor.