ANDOCIDES

The second in order of time in the roll of Attic orators. He was born B.C. 439, and belonged by birth to the aristocratic party, but fell out with it in 415, when he was involved in the famous trial for mutilating the statues of Hermes, and, to save his own and his kinsmen's lives, betrayed his aristocratic accomplices. Having, in spite of the immunity promised him, fallen into partial atimia (loss of civic rights), he left Athens, and carried on a profitable trade in Cyprus. After two fruitless attempts to recover his status at home, he was allowed at last, upon the fall of the Thirty and the amnesty of B.C. 403, to return to Athens, where he succeeded in repelling renewed attacks, and gaining an honourable position. Sent to Sparta in B.C. 390, during the Corinthian War, to negotiate peace, he brought back the draft of a treaty, for the ratification of which he vainly pleaded in a speech that is still extant. He is said to have been banished in consequence, and to have died in exile. Beside the above-mentioned oration, we have two delivered on his own behalf, one pleading for his recall from banishment, B.C. 410; another against the charge of unlawful participation in the mysteries, B.C. 399; a fourth, Against Alcibiades, is spurious. His oratory is plain and artless, and its expressions those of the popular language of the day.