18
It makes me angry to think that while you yourselves cannot place even malefactors under arrest without risk, because it is enacted that anyone who fails to gain one-fifth of the votes shall be liable to a fine of a thousand drachmae, Alcibiades, who imprisoned a man for so long and forced him to paint, went unpunished—nay, increased thereby the awe and the fear in which he is held. In our treaties with other statesFor σύμβολα see Antiph. 5.78 note 2. we make it a condition that no free man shall be imprisoned or placed in durance, and a heavy fine is prescribed as the penalty for so doing. Yet when Alcibiades behaved as he did, no one sought satisfaction, whether for himself or for the state.
19
Obedience to the magistrates and the laws is to my mind the one safeguard of society; and anyone who sets them at nought is destroying at one blow the surest guarantee of security which the state possesses. It is hard enough to be made to suffer by those who have no conception of right and wrong; but it is far more serious when a man who knows what the public interest requires, acts in defiance of it. He shows clearly, as Alcibiades has done, that instead of holding that he ought himself to conform with the laws of the state, he expects you to conform with his own way of life.
