Against Andocides

But Andocides has shown such contempt for the gods and for those whose duty it is to avenge them, that before he had been resident in the city ten days he instituted proceedings for impiety before the king-archon, and lodged his complaint,[*]((πρόσκλησις) was the citation of the person accused, and λῆξις was the formal complaint before the magistrate.) though he was Andocides, and had not only done what that person has done with regard to the gods, but asserted—and here you should give your closest attention—that Archippus was guilty of an impiety against the Hermes of his house. Archippus countered this with a sworn statement that the Hermes was sound and entire and had in no way been treated like the other figures of the god:

but at the same time, to avoid being troubled by a man of Andocides’ sort, he got his release by a payment of money. Well now, since Andocides has sought to exact a penalty from another for impiety, surely justice and piety require that others should exact one from him.

But he will say it is strange that the denouncer should suffer the extreme penalty, while the denounced are to retain their full rights and share the same privileges with you. Nay, in fact, he will not speak in his own defence, but will accuse the rest. Now of course the persons who ordered the recall of the rest are in the wrong, and are guilty of the same impiety as they: but if you, with your supreme authority, are yourselves the persons who have cheated the gods of their vengeance, it is certainly not those men who will be the guilty ones. Then do not allow this charge to rebound on you, when you are free to clear yourselves by punishing the wrongdoer.

Moreover, they deny the acts for which they have been denounced, whereas he admits those reported of him. And yet, in a trial before the Areopagus, that most august and equitable of courts, a man who admits his guilt suffers death, while if he contests the charge he is put to the proof, and many have been found quite innocent. So you should not hold the same opinion of those who deny and of those who admit the charge. And this, to my mind, is a strange thing:

whoever wounds a man’s person, in the head or face or hands or feet, he shall be banished, according to the laws of the Areopagus, from the city of the man who has been injured, and if he returns, he shall be impeached and punished with death; but whoever does these same injuries to the images of the gods is not to be debarred by you from approaching the very temples, and is not to be punished for entering them! Nay, surely it is just and good to have a care for those beings by whom you may be either well or ill entreated.

It is even said that many of the Greeks exclude men from their own temples on account of impious acts committed here; while to you, the very persons who have suffered these wrongs, your own established customs are of less account than they are to mere strangers!

And mark how far more impious this man has shown himself than Diagoras the Melian[*](Called the Godless; cf. Aristoph. Birds 1073; Dio. Sic. 8.6.); for he was impious in speech regarding the sacred things and celebrations of a foreign place, whereas Andocides was impious in act regarding the sanctities of his own city. Now where these sacred things are concerned you should rather be indignant, men of Athens, at guilt in your own citizens than in strangers; for in the one case the offence is in a manner alien to you, but in the other it is domestic.

And do not let off those whom you hold here as wrongdoers, while you seek to apprehend those who are in exile, proclaiming by herald your offer of a talent of silver to anyone who arrests or kills them; else you will be judged by the Greeks to be making a brave show rather than intending to punish.

He has made it plain to the Greeks at large that he does not revere the gods. For without a sign of misgiving for his actions, but with an air of assurance, he took to ship-owning, and went voyaging on the sea. But the deity was enticing him on, that he might return to his iniquities and pay the penalty at my instance.[*](The text implies that the deity is employing the speaker as a fair and convenient means of punishing Andocides.)

Well, I hope that he will indeed pay the penalty, and there would be nothing to surprise me in that; for the deity does not punish immediately, as I may conjecture by many indications, when I see others besides who have paid the penalty long after their impious acts, and their descendants punished for the ancestors’ offences. But in the meantime the deity sends upon the wrongdoers many terrors and dangers, so that many men ere now have desired that their end had come and relieved them of their troubles by death. At length, it is only when he has utterly blasted this life of theirs that the deity has closed it in death.

Only consider Andocides’ own life since he committed his impiety, and judge if there is any other man to compare with him. For Andocides, when after his offence he was brought before the court by a summary citation,[*](ἐξ ἐπιβολῆς (if Taylor’s conjecture is correct) must imply as a result of a fine summarily inflicted (by the archons); cf. Lys. 30.3.) committed himself to prison, having assessed[*](A defendant could propose a penalty as an alternative to that proposed by the plaintiff, and the judges had to vote for one or the other penalty.) the penalty at imprisonment if he failed to hand over his attendant:

he knew well that he would not be able to hand him over, since he had been put to death in order to shield this man and his offences from his servant’s denunciation. Now, must it not have been some god that destroyed his reason, when he conceived it to be easier for him to propose imprisonment than a sum of money, with as good a hope in either case?

However, as the result of this proposal he lay for nearly a year in prison, and informed as a prisoner against his own kinsmen and friends, having been granted impunity if his information should be deemed true. What soul do you think was his, when he could descend to the utmost depth of baseness in informing against his own friends, with so little prospect of deliverance?

After that, when he had achieved the death of those whom he professed to value most highly, he was held to have given true information and was released: you then passed a special decree that he was to be barred from the market-place and the temples, so that even if wronged by his enemies he could get no redress.

Why, nobody to this day, throughout the ever-memorable history of Athens, has been disqualified on so grave a charge. And justly; for neither has anyone to this day committed such acts. Should we attribute these results to the gods, or to mere chance?