Against Alcibiades (35-41)

Moreover, the legislator who instituted ostracism appears to me to have had the following intention. Observing that whenever members of the community are more powerful than the magistrates and the laws, it is impossible for an individual to obtain redress from them, he arranged that punishment for their misdeeds should be exacted by the state. Now I myself have been publicly tried four times, and have never prevented any private person who so desired from bringing me to justice. On the other hand, Alcibiades, who has worked such mischief, has never yet dared to answer for it in any way whatsoever.

So forbidding is he that instead of punishing him for the wrongs which he has done already, men fear him for what he will do hereafter; and while it pays his victims to suffer in silence, he himself is not satisfied unless he can work his will in the future also. Yet I hardly deserve to be ostracized, gentlemen, if I do not deserve to be put to death[*]; and if I was acquitted when brought to trial, I cannot deserve to be sent into exile when no trial has taken place; nor after vindicating myself so many times in court can I be thought to merit banishment on the same grounds of accusation again.

It may be objected that when I was prosecuted, the attack made upon me was a weak one, that my accusers were unimpressive, or that the case was conducted by casual enemies instead of by those who excel both as speakers and as men of action and who, in fact, brought about the death of two of the persons charged with the same offences as myself. I answer that justice requires you to banish, not those whom, after repeated inquiry, you have found to be innocent, but those who refuse to render to the state an account of their past.

Indeed what seems strange to me is this. If one sought to vindicate persons who have been put to death by showing that they met their end unjustly, such an attempt would not be tolerated. If, on the other hand, those who have been declared innocent should once more be accused on the same charge—is it not only right that you should behave in the case of the living as you would in the case of the dead?

It is characteristic of Alcibiades to pay no attention to laws or oaths himself, and to try to teach you to disregard them as well, and while he is ruthless in bringing about the banishment and the death of others, to have recourse to heartrending tears and appeals for mercy on his own account. Nor does such behaviour surprise me—he has done much that calls for tears. But whose goodwill will he gain by his entreaties, I wonder? That of the young, upon whom he has brought the disfavour of the people by his insolence, by his emptying of the gymnasia, and by behaviour which his years do not warrant? Or that of the old, whose ways are the exact opposite of his own, and whose mode of life he has treated with contempt?

However, it is not the mere exaction of punishment from wrongdoers themselves that should be your object; you should seek also to render everyone else more upright and more self-controlled by the sight of that punishment. If, then, you send me into exile, you will strike fear into all men of worth. If, on the other hand, you punish Alcibiades, you will inspire a greater respect for the law in those whose insolence is uncontrolled.

I wish, further, to remind you of what I have done. I have been sent on missions to Thessaly, to Macedonia, to Molossia, to Thesprotia, to Italy, and to Sicily. In the course of them I have reconciled such as had quarrelled with you, others I have won over to friendship, others I have detached from your enemies. If every representative of yours had done the same, you would have few foes, and you would have gained many an ally.