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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.
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Then again, remember TaureasCf. Dem. 21.147. who competed against Alcibiades as Choregus of a chorus of boys.For the duties of such a Choregus see Antiph. 6.11-13. Choruses of boys selected from each of the ten tribes competed against one another at all the major festivals of the Attic year. The law allows the ejection of any member whatsoever of a competing chorus who is not of Athenian birth, and it is forbidden to resist any attempt at such ejection. Yet in your presence, in the presence of the other Greeks who were looking on, and before all the magistrates in Athens, Alcibiades drove off Taureas with his fists.The speaker is not very clear. Apparently Taureas attempted to secure the ejection of a member of Alcibiades’ chorus, but met with violent resistance from Alcibiades himself. Cf. Dem. 21.147 Ταυρέαν ἐπάταξε χορηγοῦντ’ ἐπὶ κόρρης The spectators showed their sympathy with Taureas and their hatred of Alcibiades by applauding the one chorus and refusing to listen to the other at all. Yet Taureas was none the better off for that.
