Against Andocides (26-30)

After this he took ship and went to the king of Citium[*]; and being caught by him in an act of treachery he was imprisoned, and was in fear, not merely of death, but of daily tortures, expecting to be docked alive of his extremities.

But he slipped away from this danger and sailed back to his own city in the time of the Four Hundred[*]: such a gift of forgetfulness had Heaven bestowed on him, that he desired to come amongst the very persons whom he had wronged. When he came, he was imprisoned and tormented, but not to death, and he was released.

He then took a ship and went to Evagoras, who was king of Cyprus, committed a crime, and was locked up. He slipped away from those clutches also, a fugitive from the gods of our land, a fugitive from his own city, a fugitive from each place as soon as he arrived in it! And yet what charm could he find in a life of repeated suffering without a moment of respite?

He sailed back from that land to this city—then under a democracy —and bribed the presiding magistrates to introduce him here; but you banished him from the city, upholding at Heaven’s behest the laws which you had decreed.

And there is not a democracy, an oligarchy, a despot, or a city anywhere that is willing ever to receive this man: during all the time since he committed his impiety he spends his days as a wanderer, trusting always to unknown people rather than known, because of the wrong that he has done to those whom he knows. Finally, on his present arrival in the city he has been twice impeached in the same place.