It was amidst such eager thirst for discovery, that a new informer appeared, Diokleidês, who professed to communicate some material facts connected with the mutilation of the Hermæ, affirming that the authors of it were three hundred in number. He recounted that, on the night on which that incident occurred, he started from Athens to go to the mines of Laureion; wherein he had a slave working on hire, on whose account he was to receive pay. It was full moon, and the night was so bright that he began his journey mistaking it for daybreak.[296] On reaching the propylæum of the temple of Dionysus, he saw a body of men about three hundred in number descending from the Odeon towards the public theatre. Being alarmed at this unexpected sight, he concealed himself behind a pillar, from whence he had leisure to contemplate this body of men, who stood for some time conversing together, in groups of fifteen or twenty each, and then dispersed: the moon was so bright that he could discern the faces of most of them. As soon as they had dispersed, he pursued his walk to Laureion, from whence he returned next day, and learned to his surprise that during the night the Hermæ had been mutilated; also, that commissioners of inquiry had been named, and the reward of ten thousand drachms proclaimed for information. Impressed at once with the belief that the nocturnal crowd whom he had seen were authors of the deed, he happened soon afterwards to see one of them, Euphêmus, sitting in the workshop of a brazier, and took him aside to the neighboring temple of Hephæstus, where he mentioned in confidence that he had seen the party at work and could denounce them, but that he preferred being paid for silence, instead of giving information and incurring private enmities. Euphêmus thanked him for the warning, desiring him to come next day to the house of Leogoras and his son Andokidês, where he would see them as well as the other parties concerned. Andokidês and the rest offered to him, under solemn covenant, the sum of two talents, or twelve thousand drachms, thus overbidding the reward of ten thousand drachms proclaimed by the senate to any truth-telling informer, with admission to a partnership in the benefits of their conspiracy, supposing that it should succeed. Upon his reply that he would consider the proposition, they desired him to meet them at the house of Kallias son of Têleklês, brother-in-law of Andokidês: which meeting accordingly took place, and a solemn bargain was concluded in the acropolis. Andokidês and his friends engaged to pay the two talents to Diokleidês at the beginning of the ensuing month, as the price of his silence. But since this engagement was never performed, Diokleidês came with his information to the senate.[297]
Such—according to the report of Andokidês—was the story of this informer, which he concluded by designating forty-two individuals, out of the three hundred whom he had seen. The first names whom he specified were those of Mantitheus and Aphepsion, two senators actually sitting among his audience. Next came the remaining forty, among whom were Andokidês and many of his nearest relatives, his father Leogoras, his first or second cousins and brother-in-law, Charmidês, Taureas, Nisæus, Kalias son of Alkmæon, Phrynichus, Eukratês (brother of Nikias the commander in Sicily), and Kritias. But as there were a still greater number of names—assuming the total of three hundred to be correct—which Diokleidês was unable to specify, the commissioner Peisander proposed that Mantitheus and Aphepsion should be at once seized and tortured, in order to force them to disclose their accomplices; the psephism passed in the archonship of Skamandrius, whereby it was unlawful to apply the torture to any free Athenian, being first abrogated. Illegal, not less than cruel, as this proposition was, the senate at first received it with favor. But Mantitheus and Aphepsion, casting themselves as suppliants upon the altar in the senate-house, pleaded so strenuously for their rights as citizens, to be allowed to put in bail and stand trial before the dikastery, that this was at last granted.[298] No sooner had they provided their sureties, than they broke their covenant, mounted their horses, and deserted to the enemy, without any regard to their sureties, who were exposed by law to the same trial and the same penalties as would have overtaken the offenders themselves. This sudden flight, together with the news that a Bœotian force was assembled on the borders of Attica, exasperated still farther the frantic terror of the public mind. The senate at once took quiet measures for seizing and imprisoning all the remaining forty whose names had been denounced; while by concert with the strategi, all the citizens were put under arms; those who dwelt in the city, mustering in the market-place; those in and near the long walls, in the Theseium; those in Peiræus, in the square called the Market-place of Hippodamus. Even the horsemen of the city were convoked by sound of trumpet in the sacred precinct of the Anakeion. The senate itself remained all night in the acropolis, except the prytanes, or fifty senators of the presiding tribe, who passed the night in the public building called the Tholus. Every man in Athens felt the terrible sense of an internal conspiracy on the point of breaking out, perhaps along with an invasion of the foreigner, prevented only by the timely disclosure of Diokleidês, who was hailed as the saviour of the city, and carried in procession to dinner at the prytaneium.[299]
Miserable as the condition of the city was generally, yet more miserable was that of the prisoners confined; and worse, in every way, was still to be looked for, since the Athenians would know neither peace nor patience until they could reach, by some means or other, the names of the undisclosed conspirators. The female relatives and children of Andokidês, and his companions, were by permission along with them in the prison,[300] aggravating by their tears and wailings the affliction of the scene, when Charmidês, one of the parties confined, addressed himself to Andokidês, as his cousin and friend, imploring him to make a voluntary disclosure of all that he knew, in order to preserve the lives of so many innocent persons, his immediate kinsmen, as well as to rescue the city out of a feverish alarm not to be endured. “You know (he said) all that passed about the mutilation of the Hermæ, and your silence will now bring destruction not only upon yourself, but also upon your father and upon all of us; while if you inform, whether you have been an actor in the scene or not, you will obtain impunity for yourself and us, and at the same time soothe the terrors of the city.” Such instances on the part of Charmidês,[301] aided by the supplications of the other prisoners present, overcame the reluctance of Andokidês to become informer, and he next day made his disclosures to the senate. “Euphilêtus (he said) was the chief author of the mutilation of the Hermæ. He proposed the deed at a convivial party where I was present, but I denounced it in the strongest manner and refused all compliance. Presently, I broke my collar-bone, and injured my head, by a fall from a young horse, so badly as to be confined to my bed; when Euphilêtus took the opportunity of my absence to assure the rest of the company falsely that I had consented, and that I had agreed to cut the Hermes near my paternal house, which the tribe Ægeïs have dedicated. Accordingly, they executed the project, while I was incapable of moving, without my knowledge: they presumed that I would undertake the mutilation of this particular Hermes, and you see that this is the only one in all Athens which has escaped injury. When the conspirators ascertained that I had not been a party, Euphilêtus and Melêtus threatened me with a terrible revenge unless I observed silence: to which I replied that it was not I, but their own crime, which had brought them into danger.”
Having recounted this tale, in substance, to the senate, Andokidês tendered his slaves, both male and female, to be tortured, in order that they might confirm his story that he was in his bed and unable to leave it, on the night when the Hermæ were mutilated. It appears that the torture was actually applied (according to the custom so cruelly frequent at Athens in the case of slaves), and that the senators thus became satisfied of the truth of what Andokidês affirmed. He delivered in twenty-two names of citizens as having been the mutilators of the Hermæ: eighteen of these names, including Euphilêtus and Melêtus, had already been specified in the information of Teukrus; the remaining four, were Panætius, Diakritus, Lysistratus, and Chæredêmus; all of whom fled, the instant their names were mentioned, without waiting the chance of being seized. As soon as the senate heard the story of Andokidês, they proceeded to question Diokleidês over again; who confessed that he had given a false deposition, and begged for mercy, mentioning Alkibiadês the Phegusian—a relative of the commander in Sicily—and Amiantus, as having suborned him to the crime. Both of them fled immediately on this revelation; but Diokleidês was detained, sent before the dikastery for trial, and put to death.[302]
The foregoing is the story which Andokidês, in the oration De Mysteriis, delivered between fifteen and twenty years afterwards, represented himself to have communicated to the senate at this perilous crisis. But it probably is not the story which he really did tell, certainly not that which his enemies represented him as having told: least of all does it communicate the whole truth, or afford any satisfaction to such anxiety and alarm as are described to have been prevalent at the time. Nor does it accord with the brief information of Thucydidês, who tells us that Andokidês impeached himself, along with others, as participant in the mutilation.[303] Among the accomplices against whom he informed, his enemies affirmed that his own nearest relatives were included, though this latter statement is denied by himself. We may be sure, therefore, that the tale which Andokidês really told was something very different from what now stands in his oration. But what it really was we cannot make out; nor should we gain much even if it could be made out, since even at the time, neither Thucydidês nor other intelligent critics could determine how far it was true. The mutilation of the Hermæ remained to them always an unexplained mystery; though they accounted Andokidês the principal organizer.[304]
That which is at once most important and most incontestable, is the effect produced by the revelations of Andokidês, true or false, on the public mind at Athens. He was a young man of rank and wealth in the city, belonging to the sacred family of the Kerykes,—said to trace his pedigree to the hero Odysseus,—and invested on a previous occasion with an important naval command; whereas the preceding informers had been metics and slaves. Moreover, he was making confession of his own guilt. Hence the people received his communications with implicit confidence. They were delighted to have got to the bottom of the terrible mystery: and the public mind subsided from its furious terrors into comparative tranquillity. The citizens again began to think themselves in safety and to resume their habitual confidence in each other, while the hoplites everywhere on guard were allowed to return to their homes.[305] All the prisoners in custody on suspicion, except those against whom Andokidês informed were forthwith released: those who had fled out of apprehension, were allowed to return; while those whom he named as guilty, were tried, convicted, and put to death. Such of them as had already fled, were condemned to death in their absence, and a reward offered for their heads.[306] And though discerning men were not satisfied with the evidence upon which these sentences were pronounced, yet the general public fully believed themselves to have punished the real offenders, and were thus inexpressibly relieved from the depressing sense of unexpiated insult to the gods, as well as of danger to their political constitution from the withdrawal of divine protection.[307] Andokidês himself was pardoned, and was for the time an object, apparently, even of public gratitude, so that his father Leogoras who had been among the parties imprisoned, ventured to indict a senator named Speusippus for illegal proceedings towards him, and obtained an almost unanimous verdict from the dikastery.[308] But the character of a statue-breaker and an informer could never be otherwise than odious at Athens. Andokidês was either banished by the indirect effect of a general disqualifying decree; or at least found that he had made so many enemies, and incurred so much obloquy, by his conduct in this affair, as to make it necessary for him to quit the city. He remained in banishment for many years, and seems never to have got clear of the hatred which his conduct in this nefarious proceeding so well merited.[309]
But the comfort arising out of these disclosures respecting the Hermæ, though genuine and inestimable at the moment, was soon again disturbed. There still remained the various alleged profanations of the Eleusinian mysteries, which had not yet been investigated or brought to atonement; and these were the more sure to be pressed home, and worked with a factitious exaggeration of pious zeal, since the enemies of Alkibiadês were bent upon turning them to his ruin. Among all the ceremonies of Attic religion, there was none more profoundly or universally reverenced than the mysteries of Eleusis, originally enjoined by the goddess Dêmêtêr herself, in her visit to that place, to Eumolpus and the other Eleusinian patriarch, and transmitted as a precious hereditary privilege in their families.[310] Celebrated annually in the month of August or September, under the special care of the basileus, or second archon, these mysteries were attended by vast crowds from Athens as well as from other parts of Greece, presenting to the eye a solemn and imposing spectacle, and striking the imagination still more powerfully by the special initiation which they conferred, under pledge of secrecy, upon pious and predisposed communicants. Even the divulgation in words to the uninitiated, of that which was exhibited to the eye and ear of the assembly in the interior of the Eleusinian temple, was accounted highly criminal: much more the actual mimicry of these ceremonies for the amusement of a convivial party. Moreover, the individuals who held the great sacred offices at Eleusis,—the hierophant, the daduch (torch-bearer), and the keryx, or herald,—which were transmitted by inheritance in the Eumolpidæ and other great families of antiquity and importance, were personally insulted by such proceedings, and vindicated their own dignity at the same time that they invoked punishment on the offenders in the name of Dêmêtêr and Persephonê. The most appalling legends were current among the Athenian public, and repeated on proper occasions even by the hierophant himself, respecting the divine judgments which always overtook such impious men.[311]
When we recollect how highly the Eleusinian mysteries were venerated by Greeks not born in Athens and even by foreigners, we shall not wonder at the violent indignation excited in the Athenian mind by persons who profaned or divulged them; especially at a moment when their religious sensibilities had been so keenly wounded, and so tardily and recently healed, in reference to the Hermæ.[312] It was about this same time[313] that a prosecution was instituted against the Melian philosopher Diagoras for irreligious doctrines. Having left Athens before trial, he was found guilty in his absence, and a reward was offered for his life.
Probably the privileged sacred families, connected with the mysteries, were foremost in calling for expiation from the state to the majesty of the two offended goddesses, and for punishment on the delinquents.[314] And the enemies of Alkibiadês, personal as well as political, found the opportunity favorable for reviving that charge against him which they had artfully suffered to drop before his departure to Sicily. The matter of fact alleged against him—the mock-celebration of these holy ceremonies—was not only in itself probable, but proved by reasonably good testimony against him and some of his intimate companions. Moreover, the overbearing insolence of demeanor habitual with Alkibiadês, so glaringly at variance with the equal restraints of democracy, enabled his enemies to impute to him not only irreligious acts, but anti-constitutional purposes; an association of ideas which was at this moment the more easily accredited, since his divulgation and parody of the mysteries did not stand alone, but was interpreted in conjunction with the recent mutilation of the Hermæ—as a manifestation of the same anti-patriotic and irreligious feeling, if not part and parcel of the same treasonable scheme. And the alarm on this subject was now renewed by the appearance of a Lacedæmonian army at the isthmus, professing to contemplate some enterprise in conjunction with the Bœotians, a purpose not easy to understand, and presenting every appearance of being a cloak for hostile designs against Athens. So fully was this believed among the Athenians, that they took arms, and remained under arms one whole night in the sacred precinct of the Theseium. No enemy indeed appeared, either without or within; but the conspiracy had only been prevented from breaking out, so they imagined, by the recent inquiries and detection. Moreover, the party in Argos connected with Alkibiadês were just at this time suspected of a plot for the subversion of their own democracy, which still farther aggravated the presumptions against him, while it induced the Athenians to give up to the Argeian democratical government the oligarchical hostages which had been taken from that town a few months before,[315] in order that it might put these hostages to death, whenever it thought fit.
Such incidents materially aided the enemies of Alkibiadês in their unremitting efforts to procure his recall and condemnation. Among them were men very different in station and temper: Thessalus son of Kimon, a man of the highest lineage and of hereditary oligarchical politics, as well as Androklês, a leading demagogue or popular orator. It was the former who preferred against him in the senate the memorable impeachment, which, fortunately for our information, is recorded verbatim.