240 HISTORY OF GREECE. boast. The sentence of condemnation against him would now be unanimously approved, even by those who at the time had depre- cated it ; and the people would be more firmly persuaded than before of the reality of the association between irreligious mani- festations and treasonable designs. Doubtless the inferences so drawn from the speech would be unsound, because it represented, not the actual past sentiments of Alkibiades, but those to which he now found it convenient to lay claim. As far as so very selfish a politician could be said to have any preference, democ- racy was, in some respects, more convenient to him than oligarchy. Though offensive to his taste, it held out larger prospects to his love of show, his adventurous ambition, and his rapacity for foreign plunder; while under an oligarchy, the jealous restraints and repulses imposed on him by a few equals, would be perhaps more galling to his temper than those arising from the whole people. 1 He takes credit in his speech for moderation, as opposed to the standing license of democracy. But this is a pretence absurd even to extravagance, and which Athenians of all parties would have listened to with astonishment. Such license as that of Alkibiades had never been seen at Athens ; and it was the adventurous instincts of the democracy towards foreign conquest, combined with their imperfect apprehension of the limits and conditions under which alone their empire could be permanently maintained, which he stimulated up to the highest point, and then made use of for his own power and profit. As against himself, he had reason for accusing his political enemies of unworthy manoeuvres, and even of gross political wickedness, if they were authors or accomplices as seems probable of some in the mutilation of the Hermie. But most certainly, their public advice to the commonwealth was far less mischievous than his. And if we are to strike the balance of personal political merit between Alkibiades and his enemies, we must take into the com- parison his fraud upon the simplicity of the Lacedaemonian envoys, recounted in the last chapter but one of this History. If, then, that portion of the speech of Alkibiades, wherein he 1 See a remarkable passage of Thucyd. viii, 89. f>dov TU u-o3alvovTa, tlif n'x uro TUV ofioluvj iAaaaoi'/ufvof rtf <j>pei. and the note in explanation nl
it, in a later chapter of this History, chap. Ixii.
