Against Andocides

For Andocides is by no means unknown either to foreigners or to our own people, such has been the impiety of his conduct; since it needs must be that, if they are specially outstanding, either good or evil deeds make their doers well-known. And besides, during his absence abroad he has caused commotion in many cities, in Sicily, Italy, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, the Hellespont, Ionia and Cyprus: he has flattered many kings—everyone with whom he has had dealings, except Dionysius of Syracuse.

That monarch is either the most fortunate of them all, or far above the rest in intelligence, since he alone of those who dealt with Andocides was not deceived by the sort of man who has the art of doing no harm to his enemies but as much as he can to his friends. So, by heaven, it is no easy matter for you to show him any indulgence in contempt of justice without being noticed by the Greeks.

The moment, therefore, has come when you must of necessity make a decision on his case. For you are well aware, men of Athens, that it is not possible for you to live with our ancestral laws and with Andocides at the same time: it must be one of two things, either you must wipe out the laws, or you must get rid of the man.

He has carried audacity to such a pitch that he actually refers to the law we have made regarding him as one that has been abolished,[*](A decree of Isotimides excluded from the market-place and the temples those impious persons who had obtained immunity by laying information against others.) and claims liberty henceforth to enter the market-place and the temples---even today in the Council House of the Athenians.

Yet Pericles, they say, advised you once that in dealing with impious persons you should enforce against them not only the written but the unwritten laws also, which the Eumolpidae[*](The hereditary priests of Eleusis, who pronounced orally on cases of conscience, etc., and were the repositories of traditional, as distance from codified, custom.) follow in their exposition, and which no one has yet had the authority to abolish or the audacity to gainsay,—laws whose very author is unknown: he judged that they would thus pay the penalty, not merely to men, but also to the gods.