The Greek orators

by J. F. Dobson

Andocides was born about 440 B.C., a member of a family which had been distinguished for three generations.

His great-grandfather, as he tells us, fought against the Pisistratidae; his grandfather Andocides was one of the envoys for the peace with Sparta in 445, and was twice subsequently a strategus; his father, Leogoras, is mentioned by Aristophanes as rearing pheasants.[91] The orator himself was a member of a ἑταιρεία or club—probably a social rather than a political club, as the only meeting mentioned was purely for convivial purposes.

In 415, on the eve of the sailing of the Sicilian expedition, Athens was startled and horrified by a remarkable act of sacrilege. The images of Hermes which stood everywhere in the town were, all but one, mutilated and defaced in a single night. The superstitious citizens, with a deep feeling that the whole community must suffer for the guilty action of some of its members, considered this an evil omen for the fortunes of the Syracusan expedition, and, less reasonably, took it as an indication of impending revolution and an attempt to subvert the democracy. Their anxiety was increased by rumours that a profane parody of the Eleusinian mysteries was being celebrated in certain private houses. Such acts of impiety were likely to bring upon Athens the wrath of the gods who had hitherto protected her.

It will be remembered how Alcibiades, one of the leaders of the expedition, was accused of complicity in the plot, and how this accusation brought about his recall from Sicily and his estrangement from his native city, which led to the utter failure of the great enterprise of conquest, and ultimately, through the total loss of her best armies and fleets, to the downfall of Athens herself.

Andocides was accused of complicity both in the profanation of the mysteries and the mutilation of the Hermae. Of the former charge he apparently succeeded in clearing himself, but he confesses to a knowledge of the affair of the Hermae.

A certain Teucrus denounced eighteen persons as guilty of the mutilation of the busts. Of these some were put to death, the rest went into exile. The list included some members of the club to which Andocides belonged. Another informer, Dioclides, came forward with a tale that about three hundred persons were implicated, and he named forty-two of them, including Andocides and twelve of his near relations. Athens was in a panic, and eager for instant vengeance. The informers’ victims were at once imprisoned, and their situation was grave indeed. Andocides describes how, to save his father and other innocent persons, he at last resolved to tell what he knew. He gave his information under a promise of immunity from punishment, but in accordance with the terms of a subsequent decree he suffered ‘atimia,’ comprising exclusion from the market-place and the temples; and being thus debarred from a public career he decided to go abroad.

In the de Reditu, delivered in 410 B.C., five years after the outrage, Andocides implies that he was himself concerned in the deed, and asks pardon for his ‘youthful folly’ (§ 7). The language of Thucydides[92] and others also implies that he accused himself along with others. The language of the de Reditu is not, however, explicit, and does not necessarily disagree with the statement made twelve years later in the de Mysteriis.

Andocides there affirms that he knew of the plot and opposed its execution, but it was carried out without his knowledge. In proof of this he points out that the Hermes opposite his own house was the only one not mutilated.

‘So I told the Council that I knew the culprits, and I declared the facts—namely that Euphiletus suggested the plot while we were drinking, and I spoke against it, and for the moment prevented it. Some time later I was riding a colt I had in Cynosarges, and had a fall, and broke my collar-bone and cut my head, and was carried home on a stretcher. Euphiletus, hearing of my condition, told the others that I had been persuaded to join them, and had agreed to take a hand in the work and mutilate the Hermes beside the shrine of Phorbas. In this statement he deceived them, and this is the reason why the Hermes which you all see in front of our house, the one erected by the Aegeid tribe, was the only Hermes in Athens not to be mutilated, because it was supposed that I would do it, as Euphiletus said. The conspirators, when they heard of it, were highly indignant, considering that I knew of the affair, but had taken no part in it. On the next day Meletus and Euphiletus came to me and said: