Andokides: Works
Speech ‘On his Return.’
Four speeches ascribed to Andokides are extant, bearing the titles ‘On the Mysteries:’ ‘On his Return:’ ‘On the Peace with the Lacedaemonians:’ ‘Against Alkibiades.’ The speech On the Mysteries, as the chief extant work of its author, stands first in the manuscripts and the editions. But the second oration relates to an earlier passage in the life of Andokides, and may conveniently be considered first.
The speech of Andokides ‘On his Return’ affords no further internal evidence of its own date than that it was spoken later than 411 and earlier than 405 B. C.
1 Blass places it in 409
2. But a circumstance which he has not noticed seems to us to make it almost certain that the speech cannot have been delivered later than the summer of 410. Andokides lays stress upon the service which he has rendered to Athens by securing a supply of corn from Cyprus.
There had been a disappointment about this supply; but he states that he has overcome the difficulty,— that fourteen corn ships will be in the Peiraeus almost immediately, and that others are to follow
3. Now the event which had made this supply a matter of anxiety to Athens was the stoppage of the usual importations from the south coast of the Euxine. In 411 she had lost the command of the Bosphorus by the revolt of Chalkedon, and the command of the Hellespont by the revolt of Abydos
4. But, in 410, the battle of Kyzikos was followed by the reestablishment of Athenian power in the Propontis and in its adjacent straits. The corn-trade of the Euxine once more flowed towards Athens; and, in the autumn of 410, Agis, from his station at Dekeleia, saw with despair the multitude of corn-ships which were running into the Peiraeus
5. The benefit, therefore, for which Andokides claims so much credit; would have been no great benefit, had it been conferred later than the middle of the year 410. The Four Hundred were deposed about the middle of June, 411; and it would have been natural that Andokides should have endeavoured to return at least in the course of the following year.
As a speech on a private matter before the public assembly, this oration belongs to the same class as that which Demosthenes is said to have written for Diphilos in support of his claim to be
rewarded by the State
6. Andokides is charged, in the speech of the pseudo-Lysias, with having gained admittance to the ekklesia by bribing its presidents
7. It is unnecessary to believe this story. But the emphasis which he himself lays on the valuable information which he had previously given to the Senate
8 suggests that, without some such recommendation, he would have found it difficult to obtain a hearing from the people.
The object of the speech is to procure the removal of certain disabilities under which he was alleged to lie. His disclosures in 415 were made under a guarantee of immunity from all consequences. But the decree of Isotimides, passed soon afterwards, excluded from the marketplace and from temples all ‘who had committed impiety and who had confessed it;’ and his enemies maintained that this decree applied to him.
In the proem he points out the malice or stupidity of
the men who persist in rejecting the good offices which he is anxious to render to Athens; and refers to the importance
of the communications which he has made in confidence to the Senate. (§§ 1—4.) His so-called crimes—committed in ‘youth’ and ‘folly’—are, he contends, his misfortunes. For the disclosures which he was driven to make five years before he deserves pity—nay, gratitude—rather than hatred (§§ 5—9).
He then speaks of his life in exile; of his services to the army at Samos in 411; of his return to Athens in the time of the Four Hundred; and of his imprisonment at the instance of Peisandros, who denounced him as the friend of the democracy (§§ 10—16). Statesmen and generals serve the State at the State's expense; he has served it at his own charge. Nor has the end of these services been yet seen. The people will be soon in possession of the secrets which he has imparted to the Senate; and will soon see supplies of corn, procured by his intercession, enter the Peiraeus. (§§ 17—21.) In return for so much, he asks but one small boon—the observance of the promise of impunity under which he originally laid his information, but which was afterwards withdrawn through the influence of his enemies. (§§ 22—23.)
The peroration opens with a singular argument. When a man makes a mistake, it is not his body's fault: the blame rests with his mind. But he, since he made his mistake, has got a new mind. All that remains, therefore, of the old Andokides is his unoffending body. (§ 24.) As he was condemned on account of his former deeds, he ought now to be welcomed for his recent deeds. His family has ever been patriotic; his great-grandfather fought against the Peisistratidae; he, too, is a friend of the people. The people, he well knows, are not to blame for the breach of faith with him; they were persuaded to it by the same advisers who persuaded them to tolerate an oligarchy. They have repented of the oligarchy; let them repent also of the unjust sentence. (§§ 25—28.)
There is a striking contrast between this defence before the ekklesia and that which Andokides made on the same charges, some eleven years later, before a
law-court. There he flatly denies that he is in any degree guilty; he turns upon his adversaries with invective and ridicule; he carries the whole matter with a high hand, speaking in a thoroughly confident tone, and giving free play to his lively powers of narration. Here it is quite otherwise. He speaks with humility and remorse of the ‘folly’—the ‘madness’ of his youth; he complains feelingly of the persecution which he has suffered; he implores, in return for constant devotion to the interests of Athens, just one favour—a little favour, which will give his countrymen no trouble, but which will be to him a great joy. In 399 he is defiant; in 410 he is almost abject. In 410 the traces of guilt to which his enemies pointed were still fresh. Before his next speech was spoken, they had been dimmed, not by lapse of time only, but by that great wave of trouble which swept over Athens in 405, and which left all older memories faint in comparison with the memory of the Thirty Tyrants. Andokides the wealthy choregus, the president of the sacred mission, the steward of the sacred treasure, supported on his trial by popular politicians and by advocates chosen from his tribe, was a different person from the anxious suitor who, in the speech On his Return, implored, but could not obtain tolerance.
In the style of the speech there is little to remark except that its difference from that of the speech On the Mysteries exactly corresponds with the difference of tone. There the orator is diffuse, careless, lively; here he is more compact—for he
dared not treat a hostile assembly to long stories— more artificial—and decidedly more dull. Once only does the dramatic force of his natural style flash out—where he describes his appearance before the Council of the Four Hundred. ‘Some of the Four Hundred learned that I had arrived; sought me at once; seized me; and brought me before the Council. In an instant Peisandros was at my side:—‘Senators, I impeach this man for bringing corn and oar-spars to the enemy’’ (§ 14.)
Speech On the Mysteries.
The events with which the speech On the Mysteries is connected have been related in the life of Andokides. After his return to Athens, (probably early in 402 B. C.,) under favour of the general amnesty which followed the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants, he had spent three years in the discharge of various public offices. At length, in 399 B. C., his enemies renewed their attack. During the festival of the Great Mysteries, which Andokides attended, in the autumn of that year, Kephisios laid an information against him before the Archon Basileus.
Mode of legal procedure.
Some obscurity hangs over the form of the accusation; we will give the account of it which appears most probable. When, in 415 B. C., Andokides made his disclosures, he did so on the guarantee of impunity (
ἄδεια) which a special decree of the ekklesia had given to all who should inform. Subsequently, however, Isotimides proposed and carried a decree that all
who had committed impiety and had confessed it should be excluded from the marketplace and from the temples. The enemies of Andokides
maintained that he came under this decree. This was the immediate cause of his quitting Athens in 415. In 409 he was unsuccessful in applying to have the sentence of disfranchisement cancelled. On his return in 402, however, nothing had been said at first about his disabilities.
His accusers now contended that he had broken the decree of Isotimides by attending the Mysteries and entering the Eleusinian Temple. To attend the festival or enter the temple unlawfully would, of course, be an impiety. The information which they laid against him charged him, therefore, on this ground, with impiety. It was an
ἔνδειξις ἀσεβείας. But, in order to prove it, it was necessary to show that he came under the decree of Isotimides. It was necessary to show that he had committed impiety, as well as given information, in 415 B. C.
His defence is therefore directed to showing, in the first place, that he had not committed impiety at that time either by profaning the Mysteries or by mutilating the Hermae. The speech takes its ordinary title from the fact that the Mysteries form one of its prominent topics. But a more general title would have better described the range of its contents. It might have been more fitly called a Defence on a Charge of Impiety.
This view of the matter explains some difficulties. Andokides says (
de Myst. § 71), ‘Kephisios has informed against me according to the existing law, but bases his accusation on the decree of Isotimides.’ That is, Kephisios laid against Andokides an ordinary
ἔνδειξις ἀσεβείας. But the charge of
ἀσέβεια
rested on the assumption that he had broken the decree of Isotimides. He was not
directly charged either with profaning the Mysteries or with mutilating the Hermae; his guilt in one or both of these matters was assumed. He proceeds to prove that this assumption is groundless; and that, therefore, the decree does not apply to him
9.
The charge, like all connected with religion, was brought into court by the Archon Basileus. Since details connected with the Mysteries might be put in evidence, the judges were chosen exclusively from the initiated of the higher grade
10. Kephisios, the chief accuser
11, was assisted by Melêtos, who had been implicated in the murder of Leon under the Thirty
12, and by Epichares, who had been a member of their government
13. On the same side were Kallias
14 and Agyrrhios
15, each of whom had a private quarrel with the accused. Andokides was supported by Anytos and Kephalos, both politicians of mark, and both popular for the part which they had taken
in the restoration of the democracy
16. Advocates chosen for him by his tribesmen were also in court. It is remarkable if, as there is reason to believe, two men engaged on different sides in this trial were, in the same year, united in preferring a more famous charge of impiety. Anytos undoubtedly, Meletos
17 probably, was the accuser of Sokrates.
The speech On the Mysteries falls into three main divisions. In the first, Andokides shows his innocence in regard to the events of 415 B. C. In the second he shows that, in any case, the decree of Isotimides is now obsolete. In the third he deals with a number of minor topics.
I. §§ 1—69.
1. (
Proem.) §§ 1—7. Andokides dwells on the rancour of his enemies; insists on the fact of his having remained to stand his trial—instead of withdrawing to his property in Cyprus—as a proof of a good conscience; and appeals to the judges
18.
2. §§ 8—10. He is perplexed as to what topic of his defence he shall first approach. After a fresh appeal to the judges he resolves to begin with the facts relating to the Mysteries.
3. §§ 11—33.
The Mysteries Case. He neither profaned them himself, nor informed against others as having profaned them. Four persons, on four distinct occasions, did, in fact, so inform: viz.:—(i) Pythonikos, who produced the slave Andromachos, § 11: (ii) Teukros, § 15: (iii) Agariste, § 16: (iv) Lydos, § 17. Lydos implicated Leogoras the father of Andokides. Leogoras, however, not only cleared himself, but got a verdict in an action which he brought against the senator Speusippos, §§ 17, 18. (This occasions a parenthesis, in which Andokides defends himself against the imputation of having denounced his father and relations: §§ 19—24.) The largest reward for information (
μήνυτρα) was adjudged to Andromachos; the second, to Teukros: §§ 27, 28. Andokides calls upon the judges to recognise his innocence as regards the Mysteries: §§ 29—33.
4. §§ 34—69.
The Hermae Case. In this matter the chief informants were (i) Teukros: §§ 34—35: (ii) Diokleides, whose allegations caused a general panic: §§ 36—46: (iii) Andokides himself. The circumstances, motives and results of his disclosure are stated at length: §§ 47—69.
II. §§ 70—91.
It is argued that the decree of Isotimides is now void, because it has been cancelled by subsequent decrees, laws and oaths, §§ 70—72. These are next enumerated, as follows.
1. §§ 73—79. During the siege of Athens by the
Lacedaemonians in 405 B. C. the decree of Patrokleides was passed, reinstating all the disfranchised.
2. § 80. After the truce with Sparta in 404, when the Thirty Tyrants were established, all exiles received free permission to return.
3. § 81. After the expulsion of the Thirty in 403 a general amnesty was proclaimed.
4. §§ 82—89. At the same time, in accordance with the decree of Tisamenos, a revision of the laws was ordered. This revision having been completed, four new general laws (
νόμοι) were passed:—viz. (i) That no ‘unwritten’ law should have force: (ii) That no decree (
ψήφισμα) of ekklesia or senate should overrule a law (
νόμος): (iii) That no law should be made against an individual (
ἐπ᾽ ἀνδρί, § 87): (iv) That decisions of judges or arbiters, pronounced under the former democracy, should remain valid; but that, in future, all decisions should be based on the code as revised in the archonship of Eukleides in 403 B. C. [This is expressed by the phrase
χρῆσθαι νόμοις ἀπ᾽ Εὐκλείδου ἄρχοντος, § 87.]
5. §§ 90, 91. Returning to the subject of § 81, Andokides recalls the terms of the oath of amnesty taken in 403 B. C. He then quotes the official oath of Senators and the official oath of Judges.
III. §§ 92—150 (end).
1. §§ 92—105. He shows that, if the amnesty is to be violated in his case, it may be violated to the cost of others also. The accusers, Kephisios, Meletus and Epichares, as well as others, would, in various ways, be liable to punishment.
2. §§ 106—109. He illustrates the good effect of general amnesties by two examples from the history of Athens: (i) the moderation shown after the expulsion of the Peisistratidae: (ii) an amnesty in the time of the Persian Wars.
3. §§ 110—136. He answers a charge made against him by Kallias. Kallias asserted that Andokides, terrified by the accusation hanging over him, had laid a suppliant's bough (
ἱκετηρία) on the altar in the temple at Eleusis during the festival of the Great Mysteries. To take sanctuary, or to place a symbol of supplication, in that temple at that season, was a capital offence (as implying the approach of guilt to the temple at a holy season). Andokides explains the motive of this false charge. Kallias was seeking for his son an heiress whose hand was claimed by Andokides (§§ 110—123). This leads to a digression about a scandal connected with the birth of this son (§§ 124—131). He then attacks the abettors of Kallias in this slander—especially Agyrrhios, a fraudulent tax-farmer who had a grudge against Andokides (§§ 132—136).
4. §§ 137—139. He ridicules the assertion made by the accuser, that the gods must have preserved so great a traveller from the dangers of the sea because they reserved him for the hemlock.
5. §§ 140—150. Peroration, on three topics chiefly:— (i) the credit which Athens has gained by her policy of amnesties—credit which the judges are bound to sustain: (ii) the public services of the ancestors of Andokides: (iii) his own opportunities for usefulness to the State hereafter, if he is acquitted.
Andokides was acquitted. Before speaking of the method and style of his speech, it is due to its great historical interest to notice some of the disputed statements of fact which it contains.
Historical matter in the Speech.
1. Does the speech represent that account of his own conduct which Andokides gave in 415 when he made his disclosures before the Council of Four Hundred? Next—had he, as a matter of fact, taken part in the mutilation of the Hermae? These two
questions have been shortly discussed in Chapter IV.
19 Some reasons are there suggested for believing (1) that, in 415, Andokides had criminated himself as well as others: (2) that he was, in fact, innocent.
2. In § 11 Pythonikos, who brought forward the evidence of the slave Andromachos, is named as the first denouncer of Alkibiades. ‘Some residentaliens and slaves in attendance on their masters’ (
ἀκολούθων) are said by Thucydides (VI. 28) to have been the first accusers; and Plutarch adds that these were brought forward by Androkles. Androkles is mentioned by Andokides only in § 27, as claiming the reward (
μήνυτρα) from the Senate. In order to reconcile Andokides with Thucydides, it must be supposed either (1) that the ‘resident-aliens and slaves’ of Thucydides (VI. 28) were the witnesses of Pythonikos, and not, as Plutarch states (
Alkib. 19), of Androkles: or (2) that they were the witnesses, some of Pythonikos, some of Androkles; and that those brought forward by Androkles did not criminate Alkibiades, although Androkles
afterwards found witnesses who did so. The former supposition, which makes Plutarch inaccurate, seems the most likely.
3. In § 13 it is stated that, on Pythonikos making his accusations, Polystratos was at once arrested and executed, and that the other accused persons fled. It is certain, as Grote
20 observes, that Alkibiades was accused, but neither fled nor was brought to trial; and it would seem more probable, therefore, that the charge was dropped, for the time, in reference to the others also. On this point, however, it
does not seem necessary to assume inaccuracy in Andokides. The position of Alkibiades, as a commander of the expedition on which the hopes of the people were set and which was about to sail, was wholly exceptional. The evidence against him may also have been of a different nature.
4. In § 13 there is an oversight. Among those denounced by Pythonikos was Panaetios. And it is said that all persons so denounced—except Polystratos, who was put to death—fled. But in § 68 Panaetios appears as leaving Athens in consequence of the later denunciation of Andokides. As the list in § 13 contains ten names in all, the speaker might easily have made a mistake about one of the number. Or the evidence against Panaetios—who is named last of the ten—may have been so weak that he was acquitted upon this first charge.
5. In § 34 it is said that some of the persons accused by Teukros were put to death. To this Mr Grote
21 opposes the fact that Thucydides (VI. 60) names as having suffered death only some of those who were denounced by Andokides. It seems unsafe, however, to conclude that the orator has made a wrong statement. The language of Thuc. VI. 53,
ξυλλαμβάνοντες κατέδουν, hardly warrants the inference that imprisonment was the utmost rigour used in other cases. The statement of Andokides in § 34 is incidentally confirmed by the words which he ascribes to Charmides in § 49.
6. In § 38 Andokides quotes, without comment, the statement of Diokleides that he had seen the
faces of some of the conspirators by the light of a full moon. Now Plutarch says that one of the informers (he does not give the name), being asked how he had recognised the faces of the mutilators, answered, ‘by the light of the moon;’ and was thus convicted of falsehood, it having been new moon on the night in question
22. Diodoros (XIII. 2) tells the same story, without mentioning any name; but his account does not apply to Diokleides. Mr Grote is unquestionably right in treating the new-moon story as a later fiction
23. Andokides would not have failed to notice so fatal a slip on the part of Diokleides; nor is it likely that the informer would have made it.
7. In § 17 the action brought by Leogoras against Speusippos is mentioned directly after the evidence of Lydos. But it should be observed that it is mentioned parenthetically; and that the indefinite
κἄπειτα does not fix its date at all. Leogoras was in the prison with his son (§ 50); and the action was doubtless not brought until after the disclosures of Andokides.
8. In § 45 the panic, during which the citizens kept watch under arms through the night, is placed in immediate connection with the informations of Diokleides, who caused this panic by representing the plot as widely spread. It is said, also, that the Boeotians took advantage of the alarm at Athens to march to the frontier. Now Thucydides (VI. 60)
states that, during one night an armed body of citizens garrisoned the Theseion; but he puts this after the disclosures of Andokides, and connects it with the appearance of a Spartan force at the isthmus. Bishop Thirlwall justly remarks that, unless there were two or more occasions on which the citizens kept armed watch, Andokides, who goes into minute detail, is more likely than Thucydides to be right about the time of it
24.
9. In § 106 the expulsion from Athens of the tyrants—that is, Hippias and his adherents—is described as following upon a battle fought
ἐπὶ Παλληνίῳ, which seems to mean ‘at the Pallenion,’ the temple of Athene Pallenis at Pallene, about 10 miles E.N.E. of Athens
25. Now it was near this temple that Peisistratos, on his third return, won the victory which led to the final establishment of his tyranny, probably in 545 B. C.
26 But no battle at the same spot, or anywhere near it, is mentioned by any other authority in connexion with the expulsion of of the Peisistratidae. According to Herodotos, the Lacedaemonians sent, in 510, an expedition under Kleomenes. Kleomenes, on entering Attica from
the isthmus, met and routed the Thessalian cavalry of Hippias; advanced to Athens; and besieged the Peisistratidae, who presently capitulated
27. Herodotos and Andokides can be reconciled only by supposing that the account of Herodotos is incomplete
28. It seems more probable, however, that Andokides has confused the scene of a battle won by Peisistratos with the scene of a battle lost by the Peisistratidae
29.
10. In § 107 it is said that when, later, the Persian king made an expedition against Greece, the Athenians recalled those who had been banished, and reinstated those who had been disfranchised, when the tyrants were expelled. No such amnesty is recorded in connection with the first Persian invasion in 490; but Plutarch mentions such a measure as having been passed shortly before the battle of Salamis in 480
30. Now the Persian invasion in 490 was undertaken for the purpose of restoring Hippias; and the invasion in 480 was undertaken partly at the instance of his family. Men (or their descendants) who had been banished or disfranchised in 510 would certainly not have been restored to Athenian citizenship in 490 or 480. Andokides seems, then,
to have remembered vaguely that an act of amnesty was passed at Athens on some occasion during the Persian wars; to have placed this act in 490 instead of 480; and to have represented it as passed in favour of the very persons who would probably have been excluded from it.
11. In § 107 it is said of the Athenians;— ‘They resolved to meet the barbarians at Marathon... They fought and conquered; they freed Greece and saved their country. And having done so great a deed, they thought it not meet to bear malice against any one for the past. Therefore, although through these things
they entered upon their city desolate, their temples in ashes, their walls and houses in ruins, yet by concord they achieved the empire of Greece,’ &c. From this passage Valckenär
31, Sluiter and Grote infer that Andokides has transferred the burning of Athens by Xerxes in 480 to the first invasion in 490. This is hardly a necessary inference. Andokides is speaking of the struggle with Persia—extending from 490 to 479—as a whole. He names Marathon: he does not name Salamis or Plataea. He merely says that, after the Athenians had ‘freed Greece,’ they came back to find their city in ruins
32.
Arrangement and Style of the Speech.
It is impossible to read the speech On the
Mysteries without feeling that, as a whole, it is powerful, in spite of some evident defects. The arrangement is best in what we have called the first division (§§ 1—69), which deals with two distinct groups of facts, those relating to the Mysteries case and those relating to the Hermae case. These facts are stated in an order which is, on the whole, clear and natural, though not free from the parentheses of which Andokides was so fond, and of which sections 19—24 form an example. Less praise is due to the second part of the speech (§§ 70—91), devoted to the various enactments which had made the decree of Isotimides obsolete. It is at once full and obscure, giving needless, and withholding necessary, details. The third part (§§ 92—end) is a mere string of topics, unconnected with each other, and but slightly connected with the case. This confused appendix to the real defence is, however, significant. It shows the anxiety of Andokides to make the judges understand the rancorous personal feeling of his enemies; an anxiety natural in a man who for sixteen years had been pursued by unproved accusations. The passages about Kallias and Agyrrhios probably had a stronger effect upon the court than any conventional appeal to compassion would have produced.
As regards style, the language of the speech is thoroughly unaffected and easy, plain without studied avoidance of ornament, and rising at the right places—as when he speaks of the old victories of freedom (§§ 106—109), and in the peroration (§§ 140 —150). But the great merit of the composition is
its picturesqueness, its variety and life. The scene in the prison (§§ 48—53) and the description of the panic at Athens (§§ 43—45) are perhaps the best passages in this respect. If Andokides had not many rhetorical accomplishments, he certainly had perception of character, and the knack of describing it. Diokleides bargaining with Euphemos (§ 40)—Charmides exhorting Andokides to save the prisoners (§§ 49, 50)—Peisandros urging that Mantitheos and Aphepsion should be put on the rack (§ 43)—are well given in a few vivid touches.
Speech On the Peace with the Lacedaemonians.
The speech On the Peace with the Lacedaemonians belongs, as has been noticed in a former chapter
33, to the year 390. Athens, Thebes, Corinth and Argos had then been four years at war with Sparta. Andokides had just returned from an embassy to Sparta with a view to peace. The terms proposed by the Lacedaemonians were, as regarded Athens, permission to retain her walls and ships, and the restoration of Lemnos, Imbros and Skyros. The orator, speaking in debate in the ekklesia, urges that these terms should be accepted.
The opponents of peace contend that peace with Lacedaemon is fraught with danger to the democracy (§§ 1—2). He meets this objection by instancing a number of cases in which peace with Sparta, so far from injuring the Athenian democracy, was productive of the greatest advantage to it. He cites (1) a peace with Sparta negotiated by Miltiades during a war in Eubœa: §§ 3—5. (2) The Thirty Years' Truce, 445 B. C. §§ 6—7. (3) The Peace of Nikias,
421 B. C.: §§ 8, 9.—The compulsory truce with Sparta in 404, followed by the establishment of the Thirty Tyrants, was not, properly speaking, a peace at all; and is therefore no exception to the rule that peace with Sparta has always been found salutary (§§ 10—12).
There is no good reason for continuing the war. The claims of Athens have now been recognised; the Boeotians desire peace; the hope of finally crushing Sparta is idle (§§ 13—16). Athens is the power which gains most by the peace now proposed (§§ 17—23). If Boeotia makes peace, Athens will be left with one weak ally, Corinth, and another who is a positive encumbrance—selfish Argos (§§ 24—27). Athens must not, here, prefer weak friends, as formerly she preferred Amorges to Xerxes II.; Egesta to Syracuse; Argos to Sparta (§§ 28—32). The speaker goes on to notice a variety of objections to the peace. Some say that walls and ships are not money, and wish to recover their property abroad [
τὰ σφέτερ᾽ αὐτῶν τῆς ὑπερορίας, § 36] which was lost when the Athenian empire fell. But such men ought to remember that walls and ships were just the means by which the empire was won in the first instance (§§ 33—39).
In a peroration the assembly is reminded that the decision rests wholly with it; Argive and Corinthian envoys have come urging war; Spartan envoys, offering peace. The true plenipotentiaries are not the ambassadors, but those who vote in the ekklesia (§§ 40, 41
34).
Question of authenticity.
According to the author of the Argument, the speech On the Peace was judged spurious by Dionysios
35, and Harpokration also doubted its authenticity
36. Among modern critics, Taylor
37 and Markland
38 are the chief who have taken the same view; but they have a majority of opinions against
them
39. Probably the suspicions of Dionysios, like those of Taylor, arose mainly from the difficulties of the historical passage (§§ 3—6); and from the fact that this passage is found, slightly modified, in the speech of Aeschines On the Embassy.
It is said in §§ 3—5 that, when the Athenians ‘had the war in Euboea’—being then masters of Megara, Troezen and Pegae—Miltiades, son of Kimon, who had been ostracised, was recalled, and was sent to treat for peace at Sparta. A peace was concluded between Athens and Sparta for fifty years
40; and was observed on both sides for thirteen years. During this peace the Peiraeus was fortified (478 B. C.), and the Northern Long Wall was built (457 B. C.). Now (1) the only recorded war of Athens in which Euboea was concerned, during the life of Miltiades, was in 507, when the Chalkidians were defeated and their territory given to the first kleruchs. (2) Megara, Troezen and Pegae were not included in the Athenian alliance until long after 478 B. C. (3) Miltiades was never ostracised; having been sent to the Chersonese before the invention of ostracism by Kleisthenes. (4) No such peace as that spoken of is known; though in 491, an Athenian embassy went to Sparta with a different object—to denounce the medism of the Aeginetans
41. Most critics have assumed that Andokides refers to the Five
Years' Truce between Athens and Sparta, concluded in 450 B. C., mainly through the influence of Kimon, son of Miltiades; and that he names the father instead of the son
42. But all agree that the passage as it stands is full of inaccuracies, and can be reconciled with history only by conjectural emendation
43.
Again, in § 6 it is said that Athens having been plunged into war by the Aeginetans, and having done and suffered much evil, at last concluded the Thirty Years' Peace with Sparta (445 B. C.). The impression conveyed by this statement is wrong. The war between Athens and Aegina began about 458, and ended in 455 with the reduction of Aegina. In 450 Athens and Sparta made a truce for five years. A new train of events began with the revolution in Boeotia in 447, followed by the revolt of Megara and Euboea; and it was this which led up to the peace of 445 B. C.
These inaccuracies are in regard only to the earlier history of Athens: and the undoubtedly genuine speech On the Mysteries contains allusions which are no less inaccurate. In regard to contemporary events the speaker makes no statement which can be shown to be incorrect: and on one point—the position of Argos at the time—he is incidentally confirmed in a striking manner by Xenophon
44. A forger would have studied the early
history with more care, and would not have known
Passage common to Andokides and Aeschines. |
the details of the particular situation so well. But how does it happen that the whole historical passage (§§ 3—12) reappears, with modifications, in the speech of Aeschines On the Embassy
45? Either Aeschines copied this speech, or a later writer copied the speech of Aeschines. There can be little doubt that the former was the case. Andokides, grandfather of the orator, is mentioned in the speech On the Peace
46 as a member of the embassy to Sparta in 445 B. C. In the speech of Aeschines
47 he is named as chief of that embassy. This Andokides—an obscure
member, if he was a member, of the embassy which, according to Diodoros
48, was led by Kallias and Chares —would not have been named at all except by his own grandson. Again, there are traces in Aeschines of condensation—not always intelligent —from the speech On the Peace. Thus the latter
49 says (referring to the years before the Peloponnesian war)—‘we laid up 1000 talents in the acropolis,
and set them apart by law for the use of the people at special need’: Aeschines, leaving out the qualifying clause, makes it appear that the sum of 1000 talents was the total sum laid up in the Athenian treasury
50 during the years of peace.
The treatment of the subject certainly affords no
argument against the authenticity of the speech. Andokides gave little care to arrangement, and here there is no apparent attempt to treat the question methodically. On the other hand, the remarks about Corinth and Argos
51, and the answer to those who demanded the restoration of lands abroad
52, are both acute and sensible. In this, as in his other speech before the ekklesia, the descriptive talent of Andokides had little scope; but, as in the speech On the Mysteries, the style is spirited and vigorous.
Speech against Alkibiades.
The speech against Alkibiades is certainly spurious. It discusses the question whether the speaker, or Nikias or Alkibiades is to be ostracised. The
situation resembles one which is mentioned by Plutarch. Alkibiades, Nikias and Phaeax were rivals for power, and it had become plain that one of the three would incur ostracism
53. They therefore made common cause against Hyperbolos, who was ostracised, probably in 417 B. C.
54
The supposed date of this speech is fixed by a reference in § 22 to the capture of Melos. Melos was taken in the winter of 416—415 B. C. Nikias left Athens, never to return, in the spring of 415. Therefore the speech could have been spoken only in the early part of 415 B. C.
The orator, after stating the point at issue, and censuring the institution of ostracism (§§ 1—6), enters upon an elaborate invective against Alkibiades (§§ 10—40). The latter is attacked for having doubled the tribute of the allies (§§ 10—12); for having ill-used his wife (§§ 13—15); for contempt of the law (§§ 16—19); for beating a choregus (§§ 20, 21); for insolence after his Olympian victory (§§ 24—33). He is then contrasted with the speaker (§§ 34—40), who concludes with a notice of his own public services (§§ 41, 42).
The Speech not by Andokides.
The speech is twice cited without suspicion by Harpokration: it is also named as genuine by Photios
55. The biographer of Andokides does not
mention it; but, in its place, mentions a Defence in reply to Phaeax
56. There are traces of its ascription in antiquity both to Lysias
57 and to Aeschines
58. But an examination of the speech will show that it cannot have been spoken by Andokides, or written by him for the use of another; that it was probably not written by any one who lived at the time of which it treats; and that there is good reason for believing it to be the work of a late sophist.
That Andokides spoke this speech is inconceivable. The speaker says (§ 8) that he has been four times tried; and (§ 41) that he has been ambassador to Molossia, Thesprotia, Italy and Sicily. But elsewhere, excusing himself for acts committed in the very year in which this speech is supposed to have been delivered—in 415—Andokides pleads that he was young and foolish at the time
59. Moreover, no writer mentions Andokides as having been in danger of ostracism at the same time as Nikias and Alkibiades.
Nor is it credible that Andokides wrote the speech for another person—Phaeax, for instance, as Valckenär
60 suggests. The style is strongly against this. It is far more artificial than anything by Andokides which we possess; it approaches, indeed, more nearly to the style of Isokrates. The formal
antitheses in the proem (§§ 1—2) are a striking example of this character
61.
Was Phaeax the author?
Taylor
62 and others have ascribed the speech to Phaeax himself. Plutarch names Phaeax, Alkibiades and Nikias as the three men over whom ostracism was hanging at the same time; and quotes from a speech against Alkibiades, with which the name of Phaeax is connected, a story which appears (in a different form) in our speech
63. Then it is known from Thucydides that Phaeax went on an embassy at least to Sicily and Italy
64. Valckenär's and Ruhnken's
65 arguments against Taylor are inconclusive. If the speech was really written at the time of which it treats, it cannot be disproved, any more than it can be proved, that Phaeax was the author.
The Speech probably by a late sophist.
But an overwhelming amount of evidence tends to show that the speech is the work of a later sophist. First stand two general reasons; the supposed occasion of the speech, and the style of its composition.
As far as the nature of ostracism is known to us,
the whole speech involves a thorough misconception of it: it assumes a situation which could never have existed. Once every year the ekklesia was formally asked by its presidents whether, in that year, an ostracism should be held. If it voted affirmatively, a day was fixed. The market-place was railed in for voting, every citizen might write any name he pleased on the shell which he dropped into the urn; and if against any one name there were six thousand votes, the person so indicated was banished for ten— in later times, for five—years. The characteristic feature of the whole proceeding was the absence of everything like an open contest between definite rivals. The very object of ostracism was to get rid of a dangerous man in the quietest and least invidious way. No names were mentioned; far less was discussion dreamed of. The idea of a man rising in the ekklesia or other public gathering, and stating that he was one of three persons who were in danger of ostracism; then inveighing at great length and with extraordinary bitterness against one of the other two; and concluding with a vindication of his own consequence—would have probably seemed to Athenians of the days of ostracism incredibly indecent and absurd. In the first place, they would have been offended by his open assumption—whether true or not—that
he was one of the citizens who had rendered the resort to ostracism necessary; secondly,
they would have resented his attempt to prejudice the ballot; and if, in the end, he had escaped, his escape would probably have been due to their conviction that, as the poet Plato said of Hyperbolos, ‘it was not for such fellows that shells were invented
66.’ But the speaker against Alkibiades does not only himself speak thus; he asserts that Alkibiades is about to address the house next, and to endeavour to move it by his tears
67.
If the nature of the situation supposed were not enough, the style of the composition would in itself be almost decisive. The speaker begins with a formal statement of the matter in hand, evidently meant for a reader; and then goes on to string together all the tritest stories about Alkibiades. This —the body of the speech—has the unmistakable air of a compilation.
Particular errors.
The arguments from the supposed occasion and from the style are confirmed by the evidence of particular misstatements. In §§ 22, 23 Alkibiades is said to have had a child by a Melian woman who came into his power after the capture of Melos; but the speech, as has been shown, can refer only to the spring of 415: and Melos was taken only in the winter of 416—415. In § 33 Kimon is said to have been banished because he had married his own sister. In § 13 the commander at Delium—a battle fought but nine years before the supposed date of the speech
—is called Hipponikos instead of Hippokrates. The two last blunders would have been impossible for an Athenian of that age. On the whole there can be little doubt that in this speech we must recognize the work of a late rhetorician who saw, in the juxtaposition of Alkibiades, Nikias and Andokides, a dramatic subject; who had only an indistinct notion of how ostracism was managed in olden times; and who believed himself sufficiently prepared for his task when he had read in Plutarch all the scandalous stories relating to Alkibiades.
Lost Works.
Beside the extant speeches of Andokides, the titles of four others have been preserved. (1) Plutarch quotes an address ‘To the Associates,’ or members
Address to the Associates. |
of the oligarchical clubs, as authority for a statement that the remains of Themistokles had been dishonoured at Athens; but adds that the statement was made by Andokides merely for the purpose of exasperating the oligarchs against the people
68. Ruhnken
69, with whom Sauppe
70 agrees, thought that this Address was a letter written by Andokides, then in exile, to the fellow-conspirators of Peisandros in 411. But the breach of Andokides with the oligarchical party, after his informations in 415, was decisive and final; when he returned to Athens in 411 he was at once denounced by Peisandros and imprisoned. It seems better, then, with Kirchhoff
71 and Blass
72, to refer this Address to an earlier time than 415: perhaps to the years 420—418, a period
of keen struggle between the oligarchical and popular
parties at Athens
73. (2) The ‘Deliberative Speech’ quoted by the lexicographers
74 is identified by Kirchhoff with the last-mentioned. Its title seems, however, to show plainly that it was of a different kind, and was either spoken, or supposed to be spoken, in
Speech On the Information. |
debate in the ekklesia. (3) Harpokration once quotes a ‘Speech On the Information’ (
περὶ τῆς ἐνδείξεως) for the word
ζητητής, which occurs twice in the speech On the Mysteries
75. Hence the two speeches have sometimes been identified. But the pseudo-Plutarch expressly distinguishes them
76. And the author of the speech against Andokides states that two informations had been laid against him in the same year
77. It is true that there is no proof of the earlier information having resulted in a trial; and that the title of the lost speech, if really distinct from the
De Mysteriis, was ill-chosen. But it is difficult to suppose that the biographer could have made such a blunder as to quote the same speech by two different titles in the same sentence. On the whole, Sauppe's
78 view, that the speech On the Mysteries and the speech On the Information were distinct, appears most probable. If the lost speech referred, like the
De Mysteriis, to the Hermae case, it must have contained the word which Harpokration quotes; and it would have been natural for him to
quote it from the earlier of the two compositions in which it occurred. (4) The ‘Reply to Phaeax’ is
known only from the pseudo-Plutarch, who does not name the speech ‘Against Alkibiades’
79. It has been shown that the latter is probably the work of a late sophist; and it is likely that Phaeax, rather than Andokides, was intended to be the speaker. If, then, it could be assumed that ‘Reply to Phaeax’ is an inaccurate quotation of the title, which ought to have been cited as ‘Reply
for Phaeax,’ there is no difficulty in supposing the identity of this work with the extant speech Against Alkibiades.
Besides the names of these four speeches, two
fragments of unknown context have been preserved
80. One of them expresses the hope that Athens may not ‘again’ see the country people thronging in to seek shelter within the walls. This seems to refer to the invasion by Archidamos in 431. If this be so, the speech to which the fragment belonged was probably older than 413, when Agis occupied Dekeleia, and when the scenes of 431 must have been to some extent repeated. Such a passage might have found place either in the address To the Associates or in the Deliberative Speech
81. The other fragment speaks of Hyperbolos as then at Athens; and is therefore older, at least, than 417
82.
