Enormous consequences turned upon this speech, no less masterly in reference to the purpose and the audience, than infamous as an indication of the character of the speaker. If its contents became known at Athens, as they probably did, the enemies of Alkibiadês would be supplied with a justification of their most violent political attacks. That imputation which they had taken so much pains to fasten upon him, citing in proof of it alike his profligate expenditure, overbearing insolence, and derision of the religious ceremonies of the state,[358]—that he detested the democracy in his heart, submitted to it only from necessity, and was watching for the first safe opportunity of subverting it,—appears here in his own language as matter of avowal and boast. The sentence of condemnation against him would now be unanimously approved, even by those who at the time had deprecated it; and the people would be more firmly persuaded than before of the reality of the association between irreligious manifestations and treasonable designs. Doubtless the inferences so drawn from the speech would be unsound, because it represented, not the actual past sentiments of Alkibiadês, 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, democracy 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.[359] 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 Alkibiadês 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 manœuvres, and even of gross political wickedness, if they were authors or accomplices—as seems probable of some—in the mutilation of the Hermæ. 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 Alkibiadês and his enemies, we must take into the comparison his fraud upon the simplicity of the Lacedæmonian envoys, recounted in the last chapter but one of this History. [358] Thucyd. vi, 28.