Andocides
The orator of the Mysteries scandal
c. 440 BC – c. 390 BC
Andocides was born around 440 BC into one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Athens. His grandfather had been one of the ten ambassadors who negotiated the Thirty Years' Peace with Sparta in 446/5 BC. Andocides seemed destined for a conventional career in Athenian public life — until the scandal of the Herms.
In 415 BC, on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition, someone mutilated the herms — the stone pillars of Hermes that stood at crossroads throughout Athens. In the hysterical investigation that followed, Andocides was implicated and, to save himself, turned informer. He named names, was stripped of some civic rights, and went into exile. He spent years wandering the Mediterranean as a merchant before returning to Athens after the amnesty of 403 BC.
Four speeches survive under his name (one is probably spurious). On the Mysteries, his defence against charges of impiety after his return, is the most important: it provides our most detailed account of the herms affair and the religious scandals of 415 BC. His prose is direct and unpretentious — he was not a professional orator, and it shows, but the plainness has its own power.
A speech attacking Alcibiades, attributed to Andocides but probably spurious.
Andocides pleads for his return from exile, arguing that he has suffered enough.
Andocides defends himself against the charge of impiety — he was implicated in the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the Mysteries in 415...