INFORMATION OF ANDOKIDES 205 romething very different from what now stands in his oration, Cut what it really was we cannot make out ; nor should we gain vauch even if it could be made out, since even at the 'ame, neither Thucydides nor other intelligent critics could determine how far it was true. The mutilation of the Hernias remained to them always an unexplained mystery ; though they accounted Andokides the principal organizer.' That which is at once most important and most incontestable, is the effect produced by the revelations of Andokides, true or false, on the public mind at Athens. He was a young man of rank and wealth in the city, belonging to the sacred family of the Kerykes, said to trace his pedigree to the hero Odysseus, and invested on a previous occasion with an important naval command ; whereas the preceding informers had been metics and slaves. Moreover, he was making confession of his own guilt. Hence the people received his communications with implicit con- fidence. They were delighted to have got to the bottom of the terrible mystery : and the public mind subsided from its furious terrors into comparative tranquillity. The citizens again began to think themselves in safety and to resume their habitual confi- dence in each other, while the hoplites everywhere on guard were allowed to return to their homes. 2 All the prisoners in cus- 1 Thucyd. vi, 60. evravda uvcnreideTai elf T uv dsdsfisv u v, oairep tSoKEL aiTlUTOTOf I V O I, ilTTO TUV ^Vl>6sfffJ.UTUV TIVO, IT Upa Kdl TU. ovTa (j.7}vvaai, elre >cai ov- i~' ua^oTepa yap einu&Tai' rb (5e OvSeiC OVTE TOTE OVTE VffTEpOV tyst EITTEIV TTEpl TUV dpaffUVTUV TO If the statement of Andokides in the Oratio de Mysteriis is correct, the deposition previously given by Teukrus the metic must have been a true one ; though this man is commonly denounced among the lying witnesses (see the words of the comic writer Phrynichus ap. Plutarch, Alkib. c. 20). Thucydides refuses even to mention the name of Andokides, and ex- presses himself with more than usual reserve about this dark transaction, as if he were afraid of giving offence to great Athenian families. The bitter feuds which it left behind at Athens, for years afterwards, are shown in the two orations of Lysias and of Andokides. If the story of Didymus be true, that Thucydides after his return from exile to Athens died by a ' violent death (see Biogr. Thucyd. p. xvii, ed. Arnold), it would seem prob- able that all his reserve did not protect him against private enmities aris- ing out of his historical assertions.
- Thucyd. vi, 60. 'O <5e 6f]/j.of 6 TUV 'AAyVotov uausvoe '/.aftuv, u
r t> oa<t>tf, etc. . compare Andokid. dc Mvsteriis, sects. 7, 68
