Probably the privileged sacred families, connected with the mysteries, were foremost in calling for expiation from the state to the majesty of the two offended goddesses, and for punishment on the delinquents.[314] And the enemies of Alkibiadês, personal as well as political, found the opportunity favorable for reviving that charge against him which they had artfully suffered to drop before his departure to Sicily. The matter of fact alleged against him—the mock-celebration of these holy ceremonies—was not only in itself probable, but proved by reasonably good testimony against him and some of his intimate companions. Moreover, the overbearing insolence of demeanor habitual with Alkibiadês, so glaringly at variance with the equal restraints of democracy, enabled his enemies to impute to him not only irreligious acts, but anti-constitutional purposes; an association of ideas which was at this moment the more easily accredited, since his divulgation and parody of the mysteries did not stand alone, but was interpreted in conjunction with the recent mutilation of the Hermæ—as a manifestation of the same anti-patriotic and irreligious feeling, if not part and parcel of the same treasonable scheme. And the alarm on this subject was now renewed by the appearance of a Lacedæmonian army at the isthmus, professing to contemplate some enterprise in conjunction with the Bœotians, a purpose not easy to understand, and presenting every appearance of being a cloak for hostile designs against Athens. So fully was this believed among the Athenians, that they took arms, and remained under arms one whole night in the sacred precinct of the Theseium. No enemy indeed appeared, either without or within; but the conspiracy had only been prevented from breaking out, so they imagined, by the recent inquiries and detection. Moreover, the party in Argos connected with Alkibiadês were just at this time suspected of a plot for the subversion of their own democracy, which still farther aggravated the presumptions against him, while it induced the Athenians to give up to the Argeian democratical government the oligarchical hostages which had been taken from that town a few months before,[315] in order that it might put these hostages to death, whenever it thought fit. [314] We shall find these sacred families hereafter to be the most obstinate in opposing the return of Alkibiadês from banishment (Thucyd. viii, 53). [315] Thucyd. vi, 53-61.