Athens condemned Alcibiades, auctioned his property item by item on marble slabs, ordered priests to curse him, then gave the property back

In 415 BC, as Athens sent its fleet against Sicily, the city's herms were mutilated, and men were accused of profaning the Mysteries of Eleusis. Alcibiades, a general of the expedition, was accused. Athens sent the state galley to bring him home for trial. He did not stand trial and went over to Sparta^†. His case "went by default." His property was confiscated, and a decree ordered every priest and priestess to curse his name. One priestess, Theano, refused: she was a praying priestess, she said, not a cursing one. The sale officials auctioned the property of the condemned in 414/3 BC and cut each item, its price and its sales tax into marble slabs, now called the Attic Stelai. The Agora excavations hold 36 fragments of one record, catalogued as "Confiscated property of Alcibiades," found between 1932 and 1959, several near the Eleusinion (IG I³ 421 to 431). In 408 BC Alcibiades came back to Athens. The assembly crowned him with gold, made him general with sole command on land and sea, voted to restore his property, and ordered the priestly families to revoke their curses. All did except the high priest Theodorus, who said he had cursed no one who did the city no wrong. The fragments remain in the Agora collection in Athens, published by W. Kendrick Pritchett in Hesperia from 1953.