evidence upon which these sentences were pronounced, yet the general public fully believed themselves to have punished the real offenders, and were thus inexpressibly relieved from the depressing sense of unexpiated insult to the gods, as well as of danger to their political constitution from the withdrawal of divine protection'. Andokidês him.self was pardoned, and was for the time an object, apparently, even of public gratitude; so that his father Leogoras, who had been among the parties imprisoned, ventured to indict a senator named Speusippus for illegal proceedings towards him, and obtained an almost unanimous verdict from the Dikastery. But the character of a statue-breaker and an informer could never be otherwise than odious at Athens. Andokidês was either banished by the indirect effect of a general disqualifying decree; or at least found that he had made so many enemies, and incurred so much obloquy, by his conduct in this affair, as to make it necessary for him to quit the city. He remained in banishment for many years, and seems never to have got clear of the hatred which his conduct in this nefarious proceeding so well merited3.

1 Thucyd. vi. 60. ἡ μέντοι ἄλλη πόλις περιφανῶς ὠφέλητο: compare Andokid. de Reditu, sect. 8.

2 See Andokid. de Mysteriis, sect. 17. There are several circumstances not easily intelligible respecting this yрapǹ ñaрavóμwv which Andokidês alleges that his father Leogoras brought against the senator Speusippus, before a Dikastery of 6000 persons (a number very difficult to believe), out of whom he says that Speusippus only obtained 200 votes. But if this trial ever took place at all, we cannot believe that it could have taken place until after the public mind was tranquillized by the disclosures of Andokidês-especially as Leogoras was actually in prison along with Andokidês immediately before those disclosures were given in.

3 See for evidence of these general positions respecting the circum

Anxiety and alarm

revived, respecting the persons concerned

But the comfort arising out of these disclosures respecting the Hermæ, though genuine and inestimable at the moment, was soon again disturbed. There still remained the various alleged profanafanation of tions of the Eleusinian mysteries, which had not nian myste- yet been investigated or brought to atonement;

in the pro

the Eleusi

ries.

profanations the more sure to be pressed home, and worked with a factitious exaggeration of pious zeal, since the enemies of Alkibiadês were bent upon turning them to his ruin. Among all the ceremonies of Attic religion, there was none more profoundly or universally reverenced than the mysteries of Eleusis; originally enjoined by the goddess Dêmêtêr herself, in her visit to that place, to Eumolpus and the other Eleusinian patriarchs, and transmitted as a precious hereditary privilege in their families1. Celebrated annually in the month of September under the special care of the Basileus or second Archon, these mysteries were attended by vast crowds from Athens as well as from other parts of Greece, presenting to the eye a solemn and imposing spectacle, and striking the imagination still more powerfully by the special initiation which they conferred, under pledge of secrecy, upon pious and predisposed communicants. Even the divulgation in words to the uninitiated, of that which was exhibited to the eye and ear of the assembly in the interior of the Eleusinian temple, was accounted highly criminal : much more the actual inimicry of these ceremonies

stances of Andokidês, the three Orations—Andokidês de Mysteriis-Andokidês de Reditu Suo-and Lysias contra Andokidem.

1 Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 475. Compare the Epigram cited in Lobeck, Eleusinia, p. 47.

for the amusement of a convivial party. Moreover the individuals who held the great sacred offices at Eleusis (the Hierophant, the Daduch or Torch-bearer, and the Keryx or Herald)-which were transmitted by inheritance in the Eumolpidæ and other great families of antiquity and importance, were personally insulted by such proceedings, and vindicated their own dignity at the same time that they invoked punishment on the offenders in the name of Dêmêtêr and Persephonê. The most appalling legends were current among the Athenian public, and repeated on proper occasions even by the Hierophant himself, respecting the divine judgments which always overtook such impious men'.

When we recollect how highly the Eleusinian mysteries were venerated by Greeks not born in Athens, and even by foreigners, we shall not wonder at the violent indignation excited in the Athenian mind by persons who profaned or divulged

1 Lysias cont. Andokid. init. et fin.; Andokid. de Myster. sect. 29. Compare the fragment of a lost Oration by Lysias against Kinêsias (Fragm. xxxi. p. 490, Bekker; Athenæus, xii. p. 551)—where Kinêsias and his friends are accused of numerous impieties, one of which consisted in celebrating festivals on unlucky and forbidden days, "in derision of our gods and our laws ”—ὡς καταγελῶντες τῶν θεῶν καὶ τῶν vóμwv Twv ημetéрov. The lamentable consequences which the displeasure of the gods had brought upon them are then set forth: the companions of Kinêsias had all miserably perished, while Kinêsias himself was living in wretched health and in a condition worse than death

τὸ δ' οὕτως ἔχοντα τοσοῦτον χρόνον διατελεῖν, καὶ καθ ̓ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἀποθνήσκοντα μὴ δύνασθαι τελευτῆσαι τὸν βίον, τούτοις μόνοις προσήκει τοῖς τὰ τοιαῦτα ἅπερ οὗτος ἐξημαρτηκόσι.

The comic poets Strattis and Plato also marked out Kinêsias among their favourite subjects of derision and libel, and seem particularly to have represented his lean person and constant ill health as a punishment of the gods for his impiety. See Meineke, Fragm. Comic. Græc. (Strattis), vol. ii. p. 768 (Plato), p. 679.

Revival of the accusa

Alkibiadês.

them; especially at a moment when their religious sensibilities had been so keenly wounded, and so tardily and recently healed, in reference to the Hermæ'. It was about this same time2 that a prosecution was instituted against the Melian philosopher Diagoras for irreligious doctrines. Having left Athens before trial, he was found guilty in his absence, and a reward was offered for his life.

Probably the privileged sacred families, connected tion against with the mysteries, were foremost in calling for expiation from the state to the majesty of the Two offended goddesses, and for punishment on the delinquents. And the enemies of Alkibiadês, personal as well as political, found the opportunity favourable for reviving that charge against him which they had artfully suffered to drop before his departure to Sicily. The matter of fact alleged against him-the mock-celebration of these holy ceremonies-was not only in itself probable, but proved by reasonably good testimony against him and some of his intimate companions. Moreover, the overbearing insolence

1 Lysias cont. Andokid. sect. 50, 51; Cornel. Nepos, Alcib. c. 4. The expressions of Pindar (Fragm. 96) and of Sophoklês (Fragm. 58, Brunck.-Edip. Kolon. 1058) respecting the value of the Eleusinian mysteries are very striking: also Cicero, Legg. ii. 14.

Horace will not allow himself to be under the same roof, or in the same boat, with any one who has been guilty of divulging these mysteries (Od. iii. 2, 26), much more then of deriding them.

The reader will find the fullest information about these ceremonies in the Eleusinia, forming the first treatise in the work of Lobeck called Aglaophamus; and in the Dissertation called Eleusinia, in K. O. Müller's Kleine Schriften, vol. ii. p. 242 seqq.

2 Diodor. xiii. 6.

3 We shall find these sacred families hereafter to be the most obstinate in opposing the return of Alkibiadês from banishment (Thucyd. viii. 53).

of demeanour habitual with Alkibiadês, so glaringly at variance with the equal restraints of democracy, enabled his enemies to impute to him not only irreligious acts, but anti-constitutional purposes; an association of ideas which was at this moment the more easily accredited, since his divulgation and parody of the mysteries did not stand alone, but was interpreted in conjunction with the recent mutilation of the Hermæ-as a manifestation of the same anti-patriotic and irreligious feeling, if not part and parcel of the same treasonable scheme. And the alarm on this subject was now renewed by the appearance of a Lacedæmonian army at the isthmus, professing to contemplate some enterprise in conjunction with the Boeotians—a purpose not easy to understand, and presenting every appearance of being a cloak for hostile designs against Athens. So fully was this believed among the Athenians, that they took arms, and remained umder arms one whole night in the sacred precinct of the Theseium. No enemy indeed appeared, either without or within: but the conspiracy had only been prevented from breaking out (so they imagined) by the recent inquiries and detection. Moreover the party in Argos connected with Alkibiadês were just at this time suspected of a plot for the subversion of their own democracy; which still farther aggravated the presumptions against him, while it induced the Athenians to give up to the Argeian democratical government the oligarchical hostages taken from that town a few months before', in order that it might 1 Thucyd. vi. 53-61.