Against Alcibiades: For Deserting the Ranks

And then, gentlemen of the jury, besides other abundant reasons for which he ought to be convicted, there is the fact that he takes your valorous conduct as a precedent to justify his own baseness. For he has the audacity to say that Alcibiades has done nothing outrageous in marching against his native land,

since you in your exile occupied Phyle, cut down trees and assaulted the walls, and by these acts of yours, instead of bequeathing disgrace to your children, you won honor in the eyes of all the world; as though there were no difference in the deserts of men who used their exile to march in the ranks of the enemy against their country, and those who strove for their return while the Lacedaemonians held the city!