A more intimate and vivid glimpse of Athenian political life during and directly after the Peloponnesian War is provided by the speech of Andokides On the Mysteries than by any other work: it is also a major source of legal and prosopographical information, and an important specimen of Attic prose style in the most crucial period of its development. Despite this it has been unduly neglected in recent years, partly for lack of an up-to-date English commentary. This new paperback (...) version of MacDowell's standard edition is intended both for undergraduates and professional scholars. The revised text with apparatus criticus is supplemented with a full introduction surveying the life and trial of Andokides and his literary style; a note on the basis of the text; a detailed commentary; and appendices which discuss Andokides' innocence or guilt, the chronology and political significance of events in 415 BC, the legal revision ordered by the decree of Teisamenos, the date of the trial and the speech, and aspects of the historical and stylistic background relevant to the work. (shrink)

In De myst. 1.11–18, Andokides reports a series of four judicial denunciations, made before the Athenians on four separate occasions in 415 B.c., concerning profanations of the Eleusinian Mysteries. After statements from the slave Andromachos and the metic Teukros, ‘a third denunciation followed. The wife of Alkmaionides, who had also been the wife of Damon, a woman named Agariste, made a denunciation that in the house of Charmides beside the Olympieion, Alkibiades, Axiochos and Adeimantos celebrated mysteries. And at this (...) denunciation all these men fled’. A fourth denunciation was made by the slave Lydos. (shrink)

In De myst. 1.11–18 , Andokides reports a series of four judicial denunciations , made before the Athenians on four separate occasions in 415 B.c., concerning profanations of the Eleusinian Mysteries. After statements from the slave Andromachos and the metic Teukros, ‘a third denunciation followed. The wife of Alkmaionides, who had also been the wife of Damon, a woman named Agariste, made a denunciation that in the house of Charmides beside the Olympieion, Alkibiades, Axiochos and Adeimantos celebrated mysteries. And (...) at this denunciation all these men fled’ . A fourth denunciation was made by the slave Lydos. (shrink)

There is a problem in §23 of Against Andokides, the sixth speech of the Corpus Lysiacum. The passage in question runs: κ δ᾽ ον τοτου το τιμματος δδετο γγς νιαυτν … ‘And as a result of the proposed penalty he was imprisoned for nearly a year …’. The speaker's context is as follows: he is castigating Andokides in connection with his trial in 400/399 for impiety and describing his lawless life since his part in the great scandals of (...) 415, the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the Mysteries. The problem in the text concerns the words νιαυτν ‘for nearly a year’, as the statement contradicts what we learn about Andokides' imprisonment in 415 from his own defence speech and above all from Thucydides. (shrink)

There is a problem in §23 of Against Andokides, the sixth speech of the Corpus Lysiacum. The passage in question runs: ⋯κ δ᾽ οὖν το⋯του το⋯ τιμ⋯ματος ⋯δ⋯δετο ⋯γγὺς ⋯νιαυτ⋯ν … ‘And as a result of the proposed penalty he was imprisoned for nearly a year …’. The speaker's context is as follows: he is castigating Andokides in connection with his trial in 400/399 for impiety and describing his lawless life since his part in the great scandals of (...) 415, the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the Mysteries. The problem in the text concerns the words ⋯νιαυτ⋯ν ‘for nearly a year’, as the statement contradicts what we learn about Andokides' imprisonment in 415 from his own defence speech and above all from Thucydides. (shrink)

No recent scholar has ever seriously maintained the genuineness of [Andokides] Oration IV, Against Alkibiades. Against it, one need cite no more than Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit , pp. 325–31; Jebb, Attic Orators , vol. i, pp. 133–9; an, pp. 191–210. The speech is quite ‘out of character’ for Andokides, who was certainly far too young ever to have been in danger of ostrakism as an alternative victim to Nikias or Alkibiades; and there is no reasonable doubt that its (...) ‘dramatic date’ is early in 415, and its ostensible speaker Phaiax, the clever young orator of Aristophanes' Knights , ambassador to Sicily in 422 and butt of Eupolis on divers occasions . These conclusions, however, leave open certain other material questions, especially that of the real date of the composition, on which in turn depends the question how far it can be legitimately used as an historical or biographical source. (shrink)

Our texts of the two complete extant works of Gorgias and of the two attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Alkidamas are derived entirely from two manuscripts. The one generally known as A is the Cripps manuscript , now in the British Museum, which is a principal authority also for Antiphon, Andokides, Isaios, Lykourgos, and Deinarchos; it contains Helen, Palamedes, and Odysseus, but not On Sophists. The other, known as X, is the Palatine manuscript , which is the principal manuscript (...) of Lysias; it contains Helen Odysseus, and On Sophists, but not Palamedes. (shrink)