The general amnesty of 403 at last gave him the opportunity which he had so long sought in vain. He returned to Athens from Cyprus ¹ , probably about the beginning of 402 ² ; and for three years was not only unmolested, but was readmitted to the employments and honours of an active citizen. He was a choregus, and dedicated in the Street of Tripods the prize which he had won with a cyclic chorus ³ ; he was gymnasiarch at the Hephaestia—head of sacred missions to the Isthmian and Olympian games—and steward of the sacred treasure ⁴ ; he is heard of as speaking in the Senate and preferring accusations in the law-courts ⁵ . At length, in 399 ⁶ , the zeal of his enemies—stimulated, perhaps, by his prosperity—appears to have revived. After one attempt which seems to have been abortive ⁷ , he was brought to trial, in the autumn of 399, on a charge of impiety. He had attended the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis; and his enemies contended that he had thereby violated the decree of Isotimides, by which he was excluded from all temples. Before the Eleusinian festival was over ⁸ , an information to this effect was laid before the Archon Basileus. The accusers were Kephisios, Epichares and Meletos, supported by Kallias and Agyrrhios. The fact that Andokides was supported in court by Anytos and Kephalos ⁹ , two popular public men, as well as by advocates chosen by his tribe, shows that his assiduous services to the State, and perhaps the persevering malice of his adversaries, had at last produced their effect upon the general feeling towards him. He speaks like a man tolerably confident of a verdict; and he was acquitted.

Little is known of the life of Andokides after 399. From the speech On the Mysteries it appears that he was at that time unmarried and childless ¹⁰ . His uncle Epilykos had died leaving two daughters, whom Andokides and Leagros, as the nearest kinsmen, had claimed in marriage before the Archon. The girl claimed by Andokides had died before the claim was heard; the other was now claimed by Kallias, who had induced Leagros to retire in his favour, and Andokides, to defeat this intrigue, had entered a counter-claim; but in 399 the case was still undecided ¹¹ . If Andokides died without legitimate issue, his family became extinct ¹² .

The first reappearance of Andokides in public life is marked by the speech On the Peace with Lacedaemon, which belongs to 390, the fourth year of the Corinthian War ¹³ . Athens, Boeotia, Corinth and Argos were at this time allied against Sparta. The success of Agesilaos in 391 had led the Athenians, probably in the winter of 391—90, to send plenipotentiaries, among whom was Andokides, to treat for peace at Sparta. According to the terms proposed by the Lacedaemonians, Athens was to retain her Long Walls—rebuilt three years before by Konon —and her fleet; she was also to recover Lemnos, Imbros and Skyros: and Boeotia was to be gratified by the withdrawal of the Spartan garrison from Orchomenos. The plenipotentiaries did not use their powers, but requested that the Athenian ekklesia might have forty days in which to consider these proposals; and returned, accompanied by Spartan envoys, to Athens ¹⁴ . It was in the ensuing debate —early in the year 390—that the speech of Andokides was made.

This, his only recorded utterance on a public question, is temperate and sensible. He points out that it is idle to wait either for the prospect of crushing Sparta in war, or for the prospect of recovering by diplomacy all the possessions abroad which Athens had lost in 405; her ships and walls are now, as they always were, her true strength, and she ought to accept thankfully the secured possession of these. The soundness of this view was proved in the sequel. By the Peace of Antalkidas three years later Athens got only what she was offered in 390; and she got it, not by treaty on equal terms with a Hellenic power, but as part of the price paid by the Persian king for the disgraceful surrender of Asiatic Hellas. The advice of Andokides probably lost something of its effect through the suspicion of ‘laconism’ attaching to all statesmen of oligarchical antecedents; and, though he had long cast in his lot with the democracy, a certain odour of oligarchy must have clung to him still. At any rate his advice was not taken. The story that he was not only disobeyed, but banished ¹⁵ , probably represents merely the desire to add one disaster more to a history so full of repulses.