Today both parties have come to listen, but from very different motives. One side wants to know whether they are to rely upon the laws as they now stand and on the oaths which you and they swore to one another; while the others have come to sound our feelings, to find out whether they will be given complete licence to fill their pockets by indictments,or informations, maybe, or arrests. Thus the truth the matter is, gentlemen, that although it is my life alone which is at stake in this trial, your verdict will decide for the public at large whether they are to put faith in your laws, or whether, on the other hand, they must choose between buying off informers and quitting Athens as fast as they can.

Your measures for reuniting Athens, gentlemen, have not been wasted; they were appropriate, and they were sound policy. To convince you of this, I wish to say a few words with regard to them. Those were dark days for Athens when the tyrants ruled her and the democrats were in exile. But, led by Leogoras, my own great-grandfather, and Charias, whose daughter bore my grandfather to Leogoras, your ancestors crushed the tyrants near the temple at Pallene,Andocides was a poor historian (cf. , Introd.). Here he confuses the battle of Pallene (Hdt. 1.62), by which Peisistratus regained his tyranny for the third time (c. 546), and the battle of Sigeum which resulted in the final expulsion of his son Hippias, the last of the dynasty (510). Leogoras and Charias were not as prominent on this occasion as Andocides would have the jury believe. The fall of Hippias was mainly due to the energy of the Alcmaeonidae and the substantial help provided by Sparta. and came back to the land of their birth. Some of their enemies they put to death, some they exiled, and some they allowed to live on in Athens without the rights of citizens.

Later the Great King invaded Greece. As soon as our fathers saw what an ordeal faced them and what vast forces the King was assembling, they decreed that exiles should be restored and disfranchised citizens reinstated, that these too should take their part in the perilous struggle for deliverance. After passing this decree, and exchanging solemn pledges and oaths, they fearlessly took up their stand as the protectors of the whole of Greece, and met the Persians at Marathon; for they felt that their own valour was itself a match for the enemy hordes. They fought, and they conquered. They gave back Greece her freedom, and they delivered Attica, the land of their birth.

After their triumph, however, they refused to revive old quarrels. And that is how men who found their city a waste, her temples burnt to the ground, and her walls and houses in ruins, men who were utterly without resources,Another gross historical error. Andocides fails to distinguish between the first Persian invasion, which ended with the Athenian victory at Marathon (490 B.C.) and the second (480 B.C.), in the course of which Athens was sacked by the enemy. brought Greece under their sway and handed on to you the glorious and mighty Athens of today—by living in unity. Long afterwards you in your turn had to face a crisis just as greatAfter Aegospotami.;

and by deciding to restore your exiles and give back their rights to the citizens who had lost them you showed that you still had the noble spirit of your forefathers. What, then, have you still to do to equal them in generosity? You must refuse to cherish grievances, gentlemen, remembering that Athens had far less in the old days upon which to build her greatness and prosperity. The same greatness and prosperity are hers still, were only we, her citizens, ready to control our passions and live in unity.

The prosecution have also accused me in connexion with the suppliant’s bough. They allege that it was I who placed it in the Eleusinium,This stood near the Acropolis and was probably the starting-point for the procession along the Sacred Way to Eleusis during the Eleusinia. and that under ancient law the penalty for doing such a thing during the Mysteries is death. The impudence of it! They resort to a ruse for my undoing, but will not leave well alone when their plot proves a failure. They proceed to bring a formal accusation against me in spite of it.

It was on our return from Eleusis, after the information had already been lodged against me.i.e. after Cephisius had lodged his ἔνδειξις ἀσεβείας with the Basileus. The Basileus would report this to the βουλή when it met in the Eleusinium, and both Cephisius and Andocides would have to attend. The Basileus appeared before the Prytanes to give the usual report on all that had occurred during the performance of the ceremonies there. The Prytanes said that they would bring him before the Council, and told him to give Cephisius and myself notice to attend at the Eleusinium, as it was there that the Council was to sit in conformity with a law of Solon’s, which lays down that a sitting shall be held in the Eleusinium on the day after the Mysteries. We duly attended;

and when the Council had assembled, Callias, son of Hipponicus, who was wearing his ceremonial robes,As δᾳδοῦχος (Torch-bearer), the hereditary office of his family, who belonged to the ancient clan of the κήρυκες. The torch was symbolic of Demeter’s search through the world for her daughter. rose and announced that a suppliant’s bough had been placed on the altar. He displayed this bough to the Council. Thereupon the heraldEucles, mentioned below. He was the official town-crier of Athens (cf. 36), and appears in various inscriptions (cf. 73). The insertion of ὁ before ἐπεξελθὼν is the simplest correction of the MS. reading in the next sentence but one. Others wish to distinguish between ὁ κῆρυξ and Eucles. called for the person responsible. There was no reply, although I was standing close by and in full view of Cephisius. When no one replied, and Eucles here, who had come out to inquire, had disappeared inside once more—but call him. Now, Eucles, testify whether these facts are correct to start with.

Evidence

The truth of my account has been attested and it seems to me to contradict the prosecution’s story flatly. The prosecution, you may remember, alleged that the Two Goddesses themselves infatuated me and made me place the bough on the altar in ignorance of the law, in order that I might be punished. But I maintain, gentlemen, that even if every word of the prosecution’s story is true, it was the Goddesses themselves who saved my life.

Suppose that I laid the bough there, and then failed to answer the Herald. Was it not I myself who was bringing about my doom by putting the bough on the altar? And was it not a piece of good fortune, my silence, that saved me, a piece of good fortune for which I clearly had the Two Goddesses to thank? Had the Goddesses desired my death, I ought surely to have confessed that I had laid the bough there, even though I had not done so. As it was, I did not answer, nor had I placed the bough on the altar.

When Eucles informed the Council that there had been no response, Callias rose once more and said that under an ancient law, as officially interpreted on a former occasion by his father, Hipponicus, the penalty for placing a bough in the Eleusinium during the Mysteries was instant death. He added that he had heard that it was I who had put it there. Thereupon Cephalus here leapt to his feet and cried: