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Περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ καθόδου

] Spoken before the Athenian Ecclesia not later than the summer of 410 B.C. [See Attic Orators, I. 109. Andoc. lays stress on the service which he has rendered to Athens by securing a supply of corn from Cyprus: but the battle of Cyzicus in 410 B.C. was followed by the re-opening of the corn-trade between the Euxine and Athens: Xen. H. I. 1. 35. The benefit for which Andoc. claims credit would have been of little importance had it been conferred later than the middle of the year 410.] The object of the speech is to procure the removal of certain disabilities under which he was alleged to lie. His disclosures in 415 B.C. were made under a guarantee of immunity from penalties. But the decree of Isotimides, passed soon afterwards, excluded from the market-place and from temples all ‘who had committed impiety and who had confessed it’; and his enemies maintained that this decree applied to him. The appeal was unsuccessful. He returned to Athens only after the general amnesty of 403 B.C. Having first deprecated the resentment felt against him for having denounced the mutilators of the Hermae in 415 B.C. (§§ 1 — 9), he proceeds, in the following passage, to speak of his life in exile — his services to the army at Samos in 411 B.C. — his return to Athens during the rule of the Four Hundred — and his imprisonment at the instance of Peisander.


§§ 10 — 16.

τότ᾽ αὐτὸς γνούς In 415 B.C., when he had denounced certain persons as concerned in the mutilation of the Hermae. αὐτός: he himself felt the misery of his position as keenly as those who condemn him.

παρανοίᾳἀνάγκῃ So in § 7 he says that he had acted νεότητί τε καὶ ἀνοίᾳ. In this speech Andoc. distinctly implies that he was concerned in the sacrilege: this was his ‘madness: the ἀνάγκη was the necessity of denouncing the guilty, or else allowing the innocent to perish. In the De Mysteriis (see next Extract), speaking 11 years later, he protests his own entire innocence. (Cp. Attic Orators, I. 113.)

πράττειν...ὀφθ.] ‘To live a life and choose an abode in which I should be as far as possible out of your sight’: ὅπου, as relative to τοιαῦτα no less than to ἐκεῖ,=ἐν οἷς, or πράττων. — ὅπου μέλλοιμι, oblique for ὅπου ἃν μέλλω.

ἐκείνης...δευρί ‘A longing for that civic and social life with you in Athens (ἐκείνης), from which I passed into this exile’ (δευρί). He is speaking at Athens; but the words describe his feeling in banishment. The vividness is characteristic of Andocides.


ἐκ δὲ τούτου ‘from that moment’ — which the con text fixes to 411 B.C.

τῶν τετρακοσίων The Four Hundred were in power from March to June, 411 B.C. For the details of the Revolution, see the life of Antiphon in the Attic Orators, I. 7 f.

διδόντος Τέμνεσθαι Archelaus, king of Macedon (413 — 399 B.C.), had given Andoc. leave to cut down and export timber for oar-spars. Macedonia was the great timber-market of Greece (Xen. Hellen. VI. 1. 11). See my note on Theophrastus Char. XXIII (=VI. p. 195), where the ἀλαζών boasts that Antipater has offered him ‘the privilege of exporting timber free of duty’ (ἐξαγωγὴ ξύλων ἀτελής).

πέντε δραχμῶν gen. of price: ‘at the rate of five drachmas’ (for each κωπεύς).

ὅσου ἐμοὶ κατέστησαν] ὅσου, not ὅσον: ‘the sum in which they stood me’ — the cost-price.


ἐνίκησαν Referring to the Athenian victory at Cynossema in 411, and perh. also to that at Cyzicus in 410 B.C.

τ. τῆς αἰτίας ‘this merit’ or ‘credit’. Cp. Aesch. Theb. 4, εἰ μὲν γὰρ εὖ πράξαιμεν, αἰτία θεοῦ.

εἰ γάρ, κ.τ.λ. ‘For if the supplies had not been imported for the army at that time, the prospect before them was not a chance of saving Athens, but a risk of losing their own lives’. κίνδυνος ἦν is equivalent to an apodosis with ἄν and aor. indic. (as εἰκότως οὐκ ἂν ἔσωσαν). Cp. Thuc. III. 74, πόλις ἐκινδύνευσε πᾶσα διαφθαρῆναι, εἰ ἄνεμος ἐπεγένετο. Cp. Aeschin. Ctes. § 123 (where ἐκινδυνεύσαμεν ἄν is a v. l.).

περὶ τοῦ μηδὲ αὐτοὺς σωθῆναι] κίνδυνος περὶ τοῦ σῶσαι, a risk in which the saving of Athens was the thing at stake: κίνδυνος περὶ τοῦ μηδὲ αὐτοὺς σωθῆναι=κίνδυνος μὴ οὐδ᾽ αὐτοὶ σωθεῖεν, a risk lest not even they themselves should be saved. Hence the μηδέ: the form περὶ τοῦ σωθῆναι being adopted merely for the sake of symmetry with περὶ τοῦ σῶσαι.


οὐκ ὀλίγῳ, κ.τ.λ. ‘The situation there (ἐνταῦθα, with regard to the army at Samos) proved to be very different from what I had supposed’: i.e. the relations of the army at Samos with the Four Hundred at Athens were such that the latter received Andoc. not as a friend but as a foe. ἔχοντα with οὐκ ὀλίγῳ μοι παρὰ γνώμην,=πάνυ ἄλλως ἔχοντα ὡς ὑπέλαβον.


οἱ ἐπὶ στρατιᾶς ὄντες ‘those upon service’, ‘the army abroad’: cp. Plat. Phaedr. 260 B, οἴκοι καὶ ἐπὶ στρατείας, domi militiaeque. στρατείας is a v. l., but στρατιά (see L. and S. s.v.) sometimes=στρατεία. The army at Samos was the mainstay of the Democracy against the oligarchical Revolution: cp. Attic Orators, I. 9.


τὴν ἑστίαντῶν ἱερῶν The hearth of the Βουλευτήριον was called Ἑστία Βουλαία (Aeschin. F. L. § 45). In Andoc. De Myst. § 44, threatened persons ἐπὶ τὴν ἑστίαν ἐκαθέζοντο. — τῶν ἱερῶν, ‘the sacred precincts’ of the altar.

εἰς...τοὺς θεούς, κ.τ.λ.although it was against the gods that I was said to have sinned, the gods seem to have been more merciful to me than men’: ἔχοντα (acc. masc.) ὀνείδη, because he was charged with having profaned the Mysteries and mutilated the Hermae.

οὗ δή, κ.τ.λ. ‘And then it was’ [at this point in my fortunes] ‘that I most bewailed my fate: I who, at a moment when the People seemed to be in evil plight’ [the Democracy having been overthrown], ‘suffered in their stead, and further, when I was found to have been the People's benefactor, was condemned to new misery on this account’: i.e. Andoc. suffered first as a democrat, and secondly as a patriotic democrat. The antithesis is defective, since the overthrow of the Democracy (κακοῦσθαι) cannot properly be contrasted with the benefits which it had received from Andoc. — Cp. Thuc. VIII. 68, τὰ τῶν τετρακοσίων...ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου ἐκακοῦτο.


*ἀπωλλύμην A corr. suggested by Bekker. ἀπολοίμην might stand if for ὅστις we wrote εἰ: and this would also account for the now redundant ἐγώ. But, considering εἶχον, I think it more likely that the copyist's eye had wandered to τραποίμην.

καὶ ἐκ τούτων, κ.τ.λ. ‘even after my escape from these perils, grave as they were’: i.e. undeterred by this warning. We cannot well render, ‘even under these circumstances, grave as they were, when I had escaped’; for ἀπαλλαγείς clearly belongs to the preceding words.

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