No protection, however, was required. Not merely did his enemies attempt no violence against him, but they said nothing in opposition when he made his defence before the senate and the public assembly. Protesting before the one as well as the other, his innocence of the impiety laid to his charge, he denounced bitterly the injustice of his enemies, and gently, but pathetically, deplored the unkindness of the people. His friends all spoke warmly in the same strain. So strenuous, and so pronounced, was the sentiment in his favor, both of the senate and of the public assembly, that no one dared to address them in the contrary sense.[216] The sentence of condemnation passed against him was cancelled: the Eumolpidæ were directed to revoke the curse which they had pronounced upon his head: the record of the sentence was destroyed, and the plate of lead upon which the curse was engraven, thrown into the sea: his confiscated property was restored: lastly, he was proclaimed general with full powers, and allowed to prepare an expedition of one hundred triremes, fifteen hundred hoplites from the regular muster-roll, and one hundred and fifty horsemen. All this passed, by unopposed vote, amidst silence on the part of enemies and acclamations from friends, amidst unmeasured promises of future achievement from himself, and confident assurances, impressed by his friends on willing hearers, that Alkibiadês was the only man competent to restore the empire and grandeur of Athens. The general expectation, which he and his friends took every possible pains to excite, was, that his victorious career of the last three years was a preparation for yet greater triumphs during the next. [216] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 4, 20; Plutarch, Alkib. c. 33; Diodor. xiii, 69.