Well, Mr. Informer, is this law in force? Yes or no, you practised villain? An echo of Soph. Aj. 103 . No; and the reason for that is of course that only laws passed after the archonship of Eucleides can be applied. That is how you come to be walking about this city alive—hardly the fate which you deserved after making a living as a common informer under the democracy, and becoming the tool of the Thirty under the oligarchy to avoid having to disgorge your profits. But that is not enough. You actually talk to me of my intrigues! i.e. political intrigues. A reference to Andocides’ membership of an oligarchic club ( ἑταιρεία ). You actually hold others up to censure— you, who had not the decency to confine your own intrigues to but a single admirer, but welcomed the entire world for next to nothing, as the court knows, and supported yourself by vice, your villainous appearance notwithstanding. But yet, although your laws deny him even the right of defending himself, Because of his immortality. the fellow has the impudence to accuse others. Really, gentlemen, as I sat watching him make his speech for the prosecution, I quite thought that I had been arrested and put on trial by the Thirty. Who would have prosecuted, if I had found myself in court in those days? Epichares, none other. There he would have been, ready with a charge, unless I bought him off. And here he is once more. Who, again, but Charicles Cf. Andoc. 1.36 , note. would have cross-examined me? Tell me Andocides, he would have asked, did you go to Decelea In 411, with the Four Hundred when they were overthrown. and occupy it as a menace to your country? I did not. Well, did you lay Attica waste and pillage your fellow Athenians by land or by sea? No. Then at least you fought 
 Athens at sea, At 
 Aegospotami , 405 B.C. Possibly this is a reference to the treachery of the pro-Spartan elements in the Athenian navy during the battle. More probably Charicles is thinking of Athenian exiles who served with the Spartan forces. or helped to demolish her walls or put down her democracy, or reinstalled yourself by force? In 403 BC. No, I have done none of those things either. Then do you expect to escape the fate of so many others? Do you not agree, gentlemen, that that is just how I would have been treated for remaining loyal to you, had I fallen into the clutches of the Thirty? Then will it not be a travesty of justice if a man whom the Thirty would have put to death, as they did others, for failing to commit any act of disloyalty to 
 Athens , is not to be acquitted when tried before you whom he refused to wrong? Such a thing would be an outrage. It would make acquittal next to impossible in any case whatsoever. The truth is, gentlemen, that although the prosecution may have availed themselves of a perfectly valid law in lodging their information against me, they based their charge upon that old decree which is concerned with an entirely different matter. So if you condemn me, beware: you will find that a host of others ought to be answering for their past conduct with far more reason than I. First there are the men who fought you, with whom you swore oaths of reconciliation: then there are the exiles whom you restored: and finally there are the citizens whose rights you gave back to them. For their sakes you removed stones of record, annulled laws, and cancelled decrees; and it is because they trust you that they are still in 
 Athens , gentlemen. What, do you imagine, will they presume their own position to be, if they find that you are allowing prosecutions for past conduct? Will any of them be ready to stand trial for his past conduct? Yet enemies and informers will spring up right and left, ready to bring every man of them into court. 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. Peace with Sp. , 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 great After 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 herald Eucles, mentioned below. He was the official town-crier of 
	 Athens (cf. 36), and appears in various inscriptions (cf. I.G. ii 2. 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: Callias, you impious scoundrel, first you are giving interpretations, when you have no right to do such a thing as a member of the Ceryces. ἐξήγησις was the prerogative of Eulmopidae alone. Then you talk of an ‘ancient law,’ when the stone at your side lays down that the penalty for placing a bough in the Eleusinium shall be a fine of a thousand drachmae. And lastly, who told you that Andocides had put the bough there? Summon him before the Council, so that we too may hear what he has to say. The stone was read, and Callias could not say who his informant was. It was thus clear to the Council that he had put the bough there himself. And now, gentlemen, you would perhaps like to know what motive Callias had in putting the bough on the altar. I will explain why he tried to trap me. Epilycus, son of Teisander, was my uncle, my mother’s brother. For the family relationships described here and in the following see p 334. He died in Sicily without male issue, but left two daughters who ought now to have passed to Leagrus and myself. If a citizen died intestate, leaving daughters, but no sons, the daughters became heiresses ( ἐπίκληροι ) and shared the estate between them. They were then obliged by law to marry their nearest male relatives, but not in the ascending line. The relatives concerned put in a claim before the Archon ( ἐπιδικασία ), and if it was not disputed, the Archon adjudged the daughters to them severally according to their degrees of relationship. If, however, as here, rival claimants appeared, a διαδικασία was held and the ἐπίκληροι were allotted accordingly. His private affairs were in confusion. The tangible property which he left did not amount to two talents, while his debts came to more than five. However, I arranged a meeting with Leagrus Leagrus, like Andocides, must have been a cousin. before our friends and told him that this was the time for decent men to show their respect for family ties.