There is, however, one kind of antithesis to which he is somewhat partial—an antithesis of thought rather than language. He is fond of explaining a difficulty of choice by putting it in the form of a dilemma.
As far as his own personal conduct was concerned, he must often have had to face dilemmas. From the part which he had played in the sacrilege, and the awkward positions in which consequently he found himself placed, it must often have been equally difficult and dangerous for him to lie and to speak the truth. So it is not unnatural that we should often find sentences like the following:
‘How would each of you have acted, Gentlemen, if you had had to choose either to die nobly, or to owe your life to a disgraceful action?
‘Some may say that what I did was base, but many would have chosen as I did.’[106]
This appeal to the individual feelings, especially the request by which it is prefaced, that they will judge ‘by human standards’ (ἀνθρωπίνως), is effective in its boldness. The speaker must have felt sure of his audience before he ventured to appeal to the lower nature which every one would like to repudiate.
In marked contrast to the dignity of Antiphon, Andocides from time to time lapses into scurrility, dragging into his speech discreditable anecdotes relating to his opponents which are quite irrelevant to his proper subject and merely serve to raise a laugh at the moment. Thus the long recital about the domestic affairs of Callias (§§ 123-130) has no bearing at all on the trial. A man whose father has been three times unhappily married may still be a trustworthy witness. The introduction of the irrelevant story is then quite unjustifiable, but, since such examples of bad taste were freely tolerated at Athens, it was worth while to make a score by such foul hitting, especially if one could deliver the blows as neatly as in the following passage:
‘At the mother’s request, the relations took the child to the altar at the time of the Apaturia. They brought a victim, and requested Callias to perform the sacrifice. He asked who was the father of the child. “Callias, the son of Hipponicus.”—“But I’m Callias.”—“Yes, and it’s your child.”’[107]
There is more to be said in justification of the attack on Epichares. To prove, or to assert violently, that his accuser was an enemy of the democracy and a person of vile character formed a presumption in favour of the defendant. Demosthenes himself made a custom of such practices, and was not less unscrupulous or less irrelevant than Andocides:
‘But Epichares, who is the worst of them all, and wants to keep up his reputation, and so acts vindictively against himself—for he was a member of the Council in the time of the Thirty; and what is the provision in the law which is inscribed on the pillar in front of the Council room? “Whosoever shall hold office in the city when the democracy has been overthrown, may be slain without penalty, and his slayer shall be free from blood-guiltiness, and shall possess the property of the slain.” Surely then, Epichares, any one who slays you now will have clean hands, according to Solon’s law? Let me have the law on the pillar read aloud?’[108]
But Andocides in such cases certainly violates the laws of good taste, and in the matter of this personal abuse, though less fertile in vocabulary, is a worthy forerunner of the great orators. His scurrility is hardly excused by the ingenuity of its epigrammatic form: