Against Alcibiades 2 (1-5)

Reflect how deeply aggrieved you[*] would be if during your scrutiny the recorders should mount the dais to request that the vote should go against you: it would strike you as monstrous that those who ordered the suit and put the question should recommend that votes be given against some men, and not given against others.

What custom could be more shameful, what proceeding more monstrous, in our city than to have the magistrate making bold, in suits concerning heiresses, to implore and beseech the judges that the matter be settled as he may prefer, or to have the war-archon and the Eleven making requests, in the suits authorized by themselves, like that in the present case?

You ought, therefore, to have just the same feeling in regard to yourselves; you should reflect that to give your support from personal motives to a man accused of evading military service will be exactly the same as if some of these officers[*] should put in a request while they are actually putting the question.

And consider, gentlemen, if you have not found sufficient proof that none of the commanders in the army up to that time was a supporter of Alcibiades. For if their statement[*] is true, they ought to have cited Pamphilus[*] for depriving the city of a horseman by taking away his horse; to have mulcted the squadron-commander for expelling Alcibiades from the squadron to the confusion of the order they had settled; and to have instructed the commander to erase his name from the roll of the infantry.