[250] Thucyd. vi, 27. Καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα μειζόνως ἐλάμβανον· τοῦ τε γὰρ ἐκπλοῦ οἰωνὸς ἐδόκει εἶναι, καὶ ἐπὶ ξυνωμοσίᾳ ἅμα νεωτέρων πραγμάτων καὶ δήμου καταλύσεως γεγενῆσθαι.
Cornelius Nepos, Alcibiad. c. 3. “Hoc quum appareret non sine magnimultorum consensione esse factam,” etc.
[251] Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 18; Pherekratês, Fr. Inc. 84, ed. Meineke; Fragment. Comic. Græc. vol. ii, p. 358, also p. 1164; Aristoph. Frag. Inc. 120.
[252] Plutarch, Alkib. c. 18; Pseudo-Plutarch, Vit. X, Orator. p. 834, who professes to quote from Kratippus, an author nearly contemporary. The Pseudo-Plutarch, however, asserts, what cannot be true, that the Corinthians employed Leontine and Egestæan agents to destroy the Hermæ. The Leontines and Egestæans were exactly the parties who had greatest interest in getting the Sicilian expedition to start: they are the last persons whom the Corinthians would have chosen as instruments. The fact is, that no foreigners could well have done the deed: it required great familiarity with all the buildings, highways, and byways of Athens.
The Athenian Philochorus (writing about the date 310-280 B.C.) ascribed the mutilation of the Hermæ to the Corinthians; if we may believe the scholiast on Aristophanês; who, however, is not very careful, since he tells us that Thucydidês ascribed that act to Alkibiadês and his friends; which is not true (Philochor. Frag. 110, ed. Didot; Schol. Aristoph. Lysistr. 1094).
[253] Thucyd. vi, 34.
[254] See Thucyd. v, 45; v, 50; viii, 5. Xenophon, Hellen. iv, 7, 4.
[255] See the remarkable passage in the contemporary pleading of Antiphon on a trial for homicide (Orat. ii. Tetralog. 1. 1, 10).
Ἀσύμφορόν θ’ ὑμῖν ἐστὶ τόνδε μιαρὸν καὶ ἄναγνον ὄντα εἰς τὰ τεμένη τῶν θεῶν εἰσιόντα μιαίνειν τὴν ἁγνείαν αὐτῶν ἐπί τε τὰς αὐτὰς τραπέζας ἰόντα συγκαταπιμπλάναι τοὺς ἀναιτίους· ἐκ γὰρ τούτων αἵ τε ἀφορίαι γίγνονται δυστυχεῖς θ’ αἱ πράξεις καθίστανται. Οἰκείαν οὖν χρὴ τὴν τιμωρίαν ἡγησαμένους, αὐτῷ τούτῳ τὰ τούτου ἀσεβήματα ἀναθέντας, ἰδίαν μὲν τὴν συμφορὰν καθαρὰν δὲ τὴν πόλιν καταστῆσαι.
Compare Antiphon, De Cæde Herodis, sect. 83 and Sophoklês, Œdip. Tyrann. 26, 96, 170, as to the miseries which befell a country, so long as the person guilty of homicide remained to pollute the soil and until he was slain or expelled. See also Xenophon, Hiero. iv, 4, and Plato, Legg. x, p. 885-910, at the beginning and the end of the tenth book. Plato ranks (ὕβρις) outrage against sacred objects as the highest and most guilty species of ὕβρις; deserving the severest punishment. He considers that the person committing such impiety, unless he be punished or banished, brings evil and the anger of the gods upon the whole population.