212 HISTORY OF GREECE. though probable, could not be considered as certain. In consider iug the conduct of the Athenians towards Alkibiades, ve have to remark, that the people were guilty of no act of injustice. He had committed at least there was fair reason for believing that lie had committed an act criminal in the estimation of every Greek ; the divulgation and profanation of the mysteries. This act alleged against him in the indictment very distinctly, divested of all supposed ulterior purpose, treasonable or other- wise was legally punishable at Athens, and was universally accounted guilty in public estimation, as an offence at once against the religious sentiment of the people and against the public safety, by offending the two goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, and driving them to withdraw their favor and pro- tection. The same demand for legal punishment would have been supposed to exist in a Christian Catholic country, down to a very recent period of history, if instead of the Eleusinian mysteries we suppose the sacrament of the mass to have been the ceremony ridiculed ; though such a proceeding would involve no breach of obligation to secrecy. Nor ought we to judge what would have been the measure of penalty formerly awarded to a person convicted of such an offence, by consulting the tendency of penal legislation during the last sixty years. Even down to the last century it would have been visited with something sharper than the draught of hemlock, which is the worst that could possi- bly have befallen Alkibiades at Athens, as we may see by the condemnation and execution of the Chevalier de la Barre at Abbeville, in 1766. The uniform tendency of Christian legisla- tion, 1 down to a recent period, leaves no room for reproaching 1 To appreciate fairly the violent emotion raised at Athens by the muti- lation of the Hernia; and by the profanation of the mysteries, it is necessary to consider the way in which analogous acts of sacrilege have been viewed in Christian and Catholic penal legislation, even down to the time of the first French Revolution. I transcribe the following extract from a work of authority on French criminal jurisprudence Jonsse, Traite de la Justice Criminelle, Paris, 1771, part iv, tit. 27, vol. iii, p. G72: " Du Crime de Lcze-Majestc Divine. Lcs Crimes de Leze Majeste Divine, sont ceux qui attaqucnt Dicu immediatertent, et qu'on doit regarder
par cettc raison comme les plus atroces et les plus cxecrables La Majeste
