Probably his disappearance and exile were acceptable to his enemies at Athens: at any rate, they thus made sure of getting rid of him; while had he come back, his condemnation to death, though probable, could not be considered as certain. In considering the conduct of the Athenians towards Alkibiadês, we 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 he 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 otherwise—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, Dêmêtêr and Persephonê, and driving them to withdraw their favor and protection. 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 possibly have befallen Alkibiadês 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 legislation,[320] down to a recent period, leaves no room for reproaching the Athenians with excessive cruelty in their penal visitation of offences against the religious sentiment. On the contrary, the Athenians are distinguished for comparative mildness and tolerance, as we shall find various opportunities for remarking. [320] To appreciate fairly the violent emotion raised at Athens by the mutilation of the Hermæ 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—_Jousse_, Traité de la Justice Criminelle, Paris, 1771, part iv, tit. 27, vol. iii, p. 672:—