THE life of Andokides has, in one broad aspect, a striking analogy to the life of Antiphon. Each man stands forth for a moment a conspicuous actor in one great scene, while the rest of his history is but dimly known; and each, at that moment, appears as an oligarch exposed to the suspicion and dislike of the democracy. The Revolution of the Four Hundred is the decisive and final event in the life of Antiphon. The mutilation of the Hermae is the first, but hardly less decisive event, in the known life of Andokides; the event which, for thirteen years afterwards, absolutely determined his fortunes, and which throws its shadow over all that is known of their sequel.

Andokides was born probably about 440 B.C. ¹ The deme Kydathene, of which he was a member, was included in the Pandionian tribe. His family was traced by Hellanikos the genealogist through Odysseus up to the god Hermes ² , and had been known in Athenian history for at least three generations. Leogoras, his great grandfather, had fought against the Peisistratidae ³ . Andokides the elder, his grandfather, was one of ten envoys who negotiated the Thirty Years' Truce with Sparta in 445 ⁴ ; and had commanded with Perikles at Samos in 440 ⁵ , and with Glaukon at Corcyra in 435 ⁶ . Leogoras, father of the orator, was, to judge from Aristophanes, famous chiefly for his dinners and his pheasants ⁷ .

The only glimpse of the life of Andokides before 415 B. C. is afforded by himself. He belonged to a set or club, of which one Euphiletos was a leading member ⁸ , and with which his address ‘To His Associates’ ( πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους), mentioned by Plutarch, has sometimes been connected ⁹ . It was in May, 415, when he was about twenty-five, when the Peiraeus was alive with preparations for the sailing of the fleet to Sicily, and all men were full of dreams of a new empire opening to the city, that Athens was astonished by a sacrilege, of which it is hard now to realise the precise effect upon the Athenian mind. When it appeared that the images of Hermes throughout the town—in the marketplace, before the doors of houses, before the temples—had been mutilated in the night, the sense of a horrible impiety was joined to a sense of helplessness against revolution ¹⁰ ; for to an Athenian it would occur instinctively that the motive of the mutilators had been not simply to insult, but to estrange, the tutelar gods of the city. This terror, while still fresh, was intensified by the rumoured travesties in private houses of the innermost sacrament of Greek religion, the Mysteries of Eleusis. In order to understand the position of Andokides, it is necessary to keep these two affairs distinct. There is nothing to shew that he was in any way concerned, as accomplice or as informer, with the profanation of the Mysteries. As a matter of course, the author of the speech against him asserts it ¹¹ ; but his own denial is emphatic and clear ¹² , and agrees with what is known from other sources. It was in the affair of the Hermae alone that he was implicated. The first important evidence in this matter was given by Teukros, a resident-alien, who had fled to Megara, and who was brought back to give information under a promise of impunity. This man denounced twelve persons as guilty in regard to the Mysteries, and eighteen as mutilators of the Hermae. Among the eighteen were Euphiletos and other members of the club to which Andokides belonged; of whom some were at once put to death, and others fled ¹³ .

But there was a very general belief that the bottom of the matter had not been reached, and that the conspiracy had been far more widely spread; a belief which the commissioners of enquiry, especially Peisandros, seem to have encouraged. As usual in such cases, the demand for discoveries created the supply. Diokleides, the Titus Oates of this plot, came forward to state that the conspiracy included no less than three hundred persons. Fortytwo of these were denounced, among whom were Andokides, his father, his brother-in-law and ten other of his relatives. They were imprisoned at once; Diokleides was feasted as a public benefactor at the Prytaneion; and the whole town spent the night under arms, panic-stricken by the extent of the conspiracy,—not knowing whence, when, or in what strength they might be attacked by the enemies of gods and men ¹⁴ . Andokides has described the first night in prison. Wives, sisters, children, who had been allowed to come to their friends, joined in their tears and cries of despair. Then it was that Charmides, one of his cousins, besought him to tell all that he knew, and to save his father, his relations and all the innocent citizens who were threatened with an infamous death. Andokides yielded. He was brought before the Council, and stated that the story of Teukros was true. The eighteen who had died or fled were indeed guilty. But there were four more whom Teukros had left out, and whom Andokides now named. These four fled ¹⁵ .

The deposition of Andokides, confirming as it did the testimony of Teukros, and at the same time supplementing that testimony, was accepted, at least at the time, as the true and complete account. The affair of the Hermae was dropped, and attention was fixed once more upon the affair of the Mysteries ¹⁶ . At some time not much later, Leogoras, the father of Andokides, gained an action which he brought against the senator Speusippos, who had illegally committed for trial Leogoras and the other persons accused by the slave Lydos of having profaned the Mysteries in the house of his master Pherekles ¹⁷ . Andokides himself was less fortunate. He had given his information under a promise of personal indemnity guaranteed by a decree of the ekklesia. After his disclosures, however, a new decree, proposed by Isotimides, cancelled the former. It provided that those who had committed impiety and confessed it should be excluded from the marketplace and from the temples; a form of ‘disgrace’ (atimia) virtually equivalent to banishment. Andokides was considered as falling under this decree, and was accordingly driven to leave Athens.

This closes the first chapter of his life. Two questions directly arising out of it suggest themselves for consideration here.

First—Does the speech On the Mysteries give the story which he really told before the Council at Athens in 415? In that speech, he represents himself as having stated that the mutilation of the Hermae had been proposed by Euphiletos at a convivial meeting of their club; that he had strenuously opposed it; and that, while he was confined to his house by illness, Euphiletos had seized the opportunity of executing the scheme, telling the others that Andokides had become favourable to it. Now it is a suspicious fact that in the speech On his Return, spoken in 410—that is, eleven years before the speech On the Mysteries—Andokides distinctly pleads guilty to certain offences committed in 415, and excuses them by his youth, his folly, his madness at the time ¹⁸ . It is suspicious, also, that not merely the author of the speech against him ¹⁹ , but also Thucydides in terms which can hardly be explained away ²⁰ , and Plutarch still more explicitly ²¹ , represent him as having accused himself along with the rest. It can hardly be doubted that, in 415, he told the Council that the mutilation of the Hermae had been a mad freak committed by the club of young men to which he belonged, and by himself among the number. Probably he felt that it would be useless to make a reservation of his own innocence. No one would believe him; and at the same time it would seriously damage the plausibility of his alleged acquaintance with the plans of the conspirators. It is very likely, however, that he did make excuses for himself, such as that his active part in the affair had been small, or that he had been drawn into it against his will, or in a moment of excitement. At the distance of sixteen years such excuses might easily grow into a denial of his having been concerned at all.

It is a further question whether, supposing that the story which he told at the time inculpated himself, this story was true. Was he really guilty? It ought to be remembered that the eighth book of Thucydides was probably written before the speech On the Mysteries had been delivered, or the exiles of 415 had returned; and that, therefore, we have perhaps larger materials than Thucydides himself had for forming a judgment on an affair which (as he says) had never been cleared up ²² . Great weight ought surely to be allowed to the circumstance that the Hermes before the house of Andokides was one of the very few ²³ which had not been mutilated. The explanation of this given by Andokides himself in 399 is at least plausible. Euphiletos, he says, had told the other conspirators that Andokides had himself undertaken the mutilation of this particular image; and so it escaped, Andokides being ill and ignorant of the whole matter. Now if Euphiletos had a spite against Andokides for having condemned his proposal, he could not, in fact, have taken a more effectual revenge. The sparing of this Hermes was just the circumstance, which, in the event, turned suspicion most strongly upon Andokides. Had he been out himself that night and engaged in the sacrilege, he could scarcely have failed to think of a danger so evident, and would have taken care that his own house should not be marked out by its immunity. If the number of mutilators was as small as he states, the neglect of such a precaution is altogether inconceivable. The conjecture to which we should incline is that the Hermae were mutilated by the small club of young men to which Andokides belonged, but that, for some reason or other, he had no hand in it; that, however, when he gave his evidence at the time, he accused himself of having been actively concerned, thinking that otherwise the rest of his story would be disbelieved. It would follow that the version of the matter given in his speech On the Mysteries is, on the whole, true in itself, but is untrue as a representation of what he stated in 415.

The second chapter in the life of Andokides covers the years from 415 to 402. It is the history of his exile.

On leaving Athens in 415 he appears to have adopted a merchant's life. Archelaos, king of Macedonia, a friend of his family, gave him the right of cutting timber and exporting it ²⁴ . In Cyprus, according to the author of the speech against him, he was imprisoned by the king of Citium on account of some treachery ²⁵ ; a story from which it would be unsafe to infer more than that Andokides had visited the island. When, after the Sicilian disaster, Samos became the headquarters of the Athenian fleet, he endeavoured to conciliate his countrymen there by supplies of corn and cargoes of oar-spars and of bronze, which his mercantile connexion enabled him to get for them at a cheap rate ²⁶ . In the spring of 411 he made ²⁷ his first attempt to re-establish himself at Athens. He was unaware, at the moment of his return, that the revolution of the Four Hundred had taken place. The hatred of the oligarchical clubs, incurred by his denunciation of his own associates, and the enmity of Peisandros, whose desire to keep up a panic had been thwarted by his reassuring disclosures, would have been enough to have prevented him from expecting any other reception than that which he actually experienced ²⁸ . He was instantly denounced to the Council by Peisandros for supplying oars to the hostile democracy at Samos, and was thrown into prison ²⁹ . Released by the downfall of the oligarchy, he again visited Cyprus,—where, according to his accuser he was once more imprisoned ‘for a misdeed’—this time by Evagoras king of Salamis ³⁰ ; but we may hesitate whether to recognise here the monotony of fate or of invention.

In Cyprus Andokides found a new opportunity to serve the interests of Athens. The loss of her power in the Propontis had cut off her corn-trade with the Euxine; and Andokides procured the despatch of corn-ships from Cyprus to the Peiraeus. ³¹ It must have been in the spring or summer of 410, before the results of the victory at Kyzikos had removed all fear of famine ³² , that Andokides was again at Athens, and in a speech in the ekklesia pleaded for the removal of the disabilities under which the decree of Isotimides was held to have placed him. He expresses penitence for his errors in 415; and lays stress upon certain information which he had given to the Senate, as well as upon his services in procuring a supply of corn ³³ . His application was rejected; and for the third time he went into exile. During the next eight years he is said to have visited Sicily, Italy, the Peloponnesus, Thessaly, the Hellespont, Ionia and Cyprus ³⁴ . In Cyprus he had received, perhaps from Evagoras, a grant of land ³⁵ ; and the fortune which afterwards enabled him to discharge costly offices at Athens, although his patrimony had been wrecked ³⁶ , appears to show that he had been active and successful as a merchant.

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 ³⁷ , probably about the beginning of 402 ³⁸ ; 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 ³⁹ ; he was gymnasiarch at the Hephaestia—head of sacred missions to the Isthmian and Olympian games—and steward of the sacred treasure ⁴⁰ ; he is heard of as speaking in the Senate and preferring accusations in the law-courts ⁴¹ . At length, in 399 ⁴² , the zeal of his enemies—stimulated, perhaps, by his prosperity—appears to have revived. After one attempt which seems to have been abortive ⁴³ , 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 ⁴⁴ , 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 ⁴⁵ , 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 ⁴⁶ . 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 ⁴⁷ . If Andokides died without legitimate issue, his family became extinct ⁴⁸ .

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 ⁴⁹ . 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 ⁵⁰ . 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 ⁵¹ , probably represents merely the desire to add one disaster more to a history so full of repulses.

A fair estimate of Andokides is made difficult by the fact that he was first brought into notice by a scandal, and that the memory of this scandal runs through nearly all that is known of his after-life. At the age of twenty-five he is banished for the Hermae affair; he is defeated, on the same ground, in two attempts to return; at the end of sixteen years he is brought to trial for impiety; and his acquittal is the last thing recorded about him. At that time he was only forty-one; already, since his return in 402, he had discharged public services; and now, formally acquitted of the charges which had so long hung over him, he might hope for a new career. His speech On the Peace shows that in 390 he was sufficiently trusted by his fellow-citizens to have been sent as a plenipotentiary to Sparta; and proves also, by its statesmanlike good sense, his fitness for such a trust. But, except in this speech, nothing is recorded of his later and probably brighter years. History knows him only under a cloud. It was, moreover, his misfortune that while the informations which he laid in 415 made him hateful to the oligarchs, his hereditary connexion with oligarchy exposed him to the continual suspicion of the democrats. One year he is imprisoned by the Four Hundred; the next he is repulsed by the ekklesia. It would be an easy inference that there must have been something palpably bad and false in the man to whom both parties were harsh, did not a closer view show that one party may have been influenced by spite and the other by prejudice. Many of those who believed that Andokides was concerned in the mutilation of the Hermae must have regarded him with sincere horror. But on the other hand it should be remembered that such horror is never so loudly expressed, and is never so useful to personal enmity, as at a time when a popular religion, still generally professed, is beginning to be widely disbelieved. Diagoras and Sokrates were accused of impiety with the more effect because the views ascribed to them resembled the real views of many who seemed orthodox. Besides those who hated Andokides as an informer, as an oligarch, or as an iconoclast, there were probably many who regarded him with that special kind of dislike which attaches to a person who drives the world into professing angry conviction on matters to which it is secretly indifferent. Viewed apart from the feelings which worked on his contemporaries, the facts of his life seem to warrant severe blame as little as they warrant high praise. His youthful associates were dissolute; through them he was involved, rightly or wrongly, in the suspicion of a great impiety; and this suspicion clung to him for years. But it was never proved; and when he was at last brought to trial, he was acquitted. As an exile he conferred on Athens services which, if not disinterested, were at all events valuable; after his return he discharged costly public services, and represented the State on an important mission.

To judge from his extant works he had not genius, but he was energetic and able. Hard and various experiences had sharpened his shrewdness; he had a quick insight into character, and especially the triumphant skill of a consciously unpopular man in exposing malignant motives. There was no nobleness in his nature, except such as is bred by selfreliance under long adversity; but he had practical good sense, which his merchant's life in exile must have trained and strengthened. If the counsel which he gives to Athens in his speech On the Peace with Lacedaemon may be taken as a sample of his statesmanship, he was an adviser of the kind rarest in the ekklesia; not only clearsighted in the interests of the city, but bold enough to recommend to Athenians a safe rather than a brilliant course.