History of the Peloponnesian War

for it was considered to be an omen of the expedition, and also to have been done on the strength of a conspiracy for bringing about a revolution, and for putting down the democracy.

Information therefore was given by some naturalized aliens, and slaves who were in personal attendance on their masters, though not at all respecting the Mercuries, yet of certain mutilations of other images which had before been perpetrated by some young men in a drunken frolic: and, moreover, that in certain private houses the mysteries were celebrated in mockery. In this charge they implicated Alcibiades;