Against Alcibiades: For Deserting the Ranks

others, again, have performed Mysteries, mutilated the Hermae, and committed profanity against all the gods and offences against the whole city, showing injustice and illegality alike in their public treatment of their fellow-men and in their behavior to each other, refraining from no audacity, and unversed in no outrageous practice? Indeed, there is nothing that they have been spared, or have spared. For their propensity is to be ashamed of what is honorable, and to glory in what is base.

It is true, gentlemen, you have acquitted ere now some persons though you held them guilty, because you supposed that they would be useful to you in the future. Well, what hope is there that the city will derive any benefit from this man, whom you will know for the worthless wretch he is, when he makes his defence, and whose villainy you have learnt from the general tenor of his life?