‘“We have done it, Andocides, and it’s all over. If you care to keep quiet and hold your tongue, you will find that we are as good friends to you as ever; if not, our enmity will count much more than any friendship you could form by betraying us.”

‘I answered that, from what had occurred, I considered Euphiletus a scoundrel; but that they had much more to fear from the fact of their guilt than from my knowledge of it.’[93]

This story is at least a plausible one. The only suspicious detail is the orator’s own candid admission that all of those whom he accused—with the exception of four—had already been named by Teucrus and punished, some by death, the rest by exile, so that his ‘confession’ could do them no further harm. The four others whom he included were not yet in prison, though they were known to be associates of those who had already paid the penalty. They had time to escape into exile (§ 68). We may suspect that they received from the informer due notice of his intentions. Thus, at the expense of driving four men, who were probably guilty, into exile, Andocides undoubtedly saved the lives of himself, his father, his brother-in-law, and the rest of the forty-two prisoners. The informer Dioclides now recanted, and said that he had been compelled by Alcibiades and Amiantus to lay false information. He was brought to trial and put to death (§ 66). Andocides, suffering from partial disfranchisement, was for many years away from Athens. He engaged in commerce in many countries, and made money, sometimes by discreditable means. He had dealings with Sicily, Italy, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Ionia, the Hellespont, and finally, Cyprus, where Evagoras, King of Salamis, bestowed a valuable property on him.[94]

In 411 B.C. he made an attempt to recover his rights. He procured oars for the Athenian fleet at Samos, and returned to Athens to plead his cause. Unfortunately the Four Hundred had then just usurped the government, and they rejected his plea on the ground that he had helped their enemies. Later, in 410 or 408 B.C., he made another attempt, and delivered the speech de Reditu, but was again unsuccessful. It was only after the amnesty of Thrasybulus (403 B.C.) that he resumed his full citizenship, and henceforward took an active part in public life, figuring now as an ardent democrat, speaking in the assembly and performing liturgies. In 399 B.C. old enmities burst into flame, and he was accused of impiety on two counts—as having taken part in the Eleusinian mysteries at a time when he was legally disqualified from doing so, and as having deposited a suppliant’s branch on the altar at Eleusis during the time of the mysteries—which was a profanation. The penalty for either offence was death, and the de Mysteriis is his successful answer to these charges.

In 391 B.C., as one of the envoys delegated to bring about a peace with Sparta, he delivered the de Pace. The peace was not concluded. This is the last mention of this interesting adventurer, though the pseudo-Plutarch affirms that he went into exile again. If that is true, we know that he had comfortable places to retire to, in Cyprus and elsewhere.

§ 3

Ancient critics dealt severely with Andocides. Though Alexandrine criticism included him in the list of the ten standard orators, Dionysius barely mentions him;[95] Quintilian disparages his work,[96] and Herodes Atticus modestly hopes that he himself is at least superior to Andocides;[97] Hermogenes sums up his defects as an orator as follows:

‘He aims at being a statesman, but does not quite succeed. He lacks proper articulation and distinctness in his “figures,” he lacks order in connecting his sentences and rounding them off, losing distinctness by the use of parentheses, so that he strikes some as ineffectual and needlessly obscure. He has very little finish or arrangement and little vigour. He has a small, but very small, portion of cleverness in systematic argument, but practically none of any other kind.’[98]

It is with some hesitation that I give this tentative translation of a difficult passage. It seems to mean that Andocides, though he uses ‘figures,’ such as antithesis, rhetorical question and irony, does not attain ‘precision’ or make them distinct enough. His sentences are sometimes deformed because a parenthesis overpowers the main clause. His diction is unpolished and unconvincing. The only credit which he deserves is for his μέθοδος—his system of stating his case; wherein Hermogenes was perhaps thinking of the way in which the orator arranges his material, giving only part of the narrative at a time, and criticizing it as he goes along, rather than keeping narrative and arguments quite separate. Later and more practised orators have been commended for this method. By general cleverness, Hermogenes probably means skill in the use of the usual sophistries of the rhetorician.