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This article argues that Andocides’ speech On His Return (Andocides 2) makes use of themes drawn from tragedy, including a near-quotation from Sophocles, in order to present the orator as deserving of pity and forgiveness. This neglected speech is therefore an ingenious work of rhetoric in its creation of ēthos and evocation of pathos. Moreover, it is a key document for the development of religious argumentation in the Athenian courts, and for the early reception of Sophocles. This also affects our interpretation of the two extant speeches from Andocides’ later trial in ca. 400, Against Andocides ([Lysias] 6) and On the Mysteries (Andocides 1), which both develop similar tragic themes in new directions.

Mirko Canevaro and Edward Harris, in their recent CQ article (henceforth C&H), have rejected, as forgeries or reconstructions of post-classical origin, all the laws and decrees appearing in the text of Andocides' speech On the Mysteries (77–98) and purporting to be the documents which the speaker, at six points in that passage, directs the clerk to read out. I have no quarrel with their arguments (pp. 100–19) for rejecting the documents presented as the decree of Patroclides (§§77–9), the decree of Tisamenus (§§83–4), and a series of new laws passed in 403/2 b.c. (§§85–7) – though in this last case, with the exception of one phrase, the genuineness of the laws themselves is confirmed by the fact that they are cited verbatim by the orator in the surrounding text (§§88–9, 93, 94, 99). I shall be concerned here only with the last document of the group, a decree ascribed to Demophantus (§§96–8), which C&H discuss at pp. 119–25.

The textual tradition of Andocides’ De Mysteriis is simple: codex unicus, almost no papyri, almost no indirect tradition. Editors are therefore bound to rely on their ingenium only. This paper discusses five passages of the oration, thus showing examples of some of the problems scholars have to face in studying it.

The manuscript of Andocides' speech On the Mysteries contains a series of documentary inserts culminating in the decrees of Patroclides (§§77–9), Tisamenus (§§83–4) and Demophantus (§§96–8). These decrees seem to fit their historical context and they are presented at length, with at least a few of the formalities that we would expect to find in the official record. Modern commentators have relied upon them as substantially genuine, allowing for the usual errors in transmission, but now their authenticity is contested. A close reading by Mirko Canevaro and Edward Harris rejects all three of these documents as products of feckless ‘forgery’. Alan Sommerstein responded with a strong defence of Demophantus' decree, and Mogens Hansen has recently defended Patroclides' decree and Tisamenus' as well. On many points the defenders are persuasive, but the sceptics make a good case, and so it seems reasonable to reconsider how these documents took shape.

Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical Athens--citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah Kamen illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy. Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.

Due to the fact that Andocides is nowhere mentioned in Cicero's oeuvre it is universally assumed that Cicero could not have read, let alone been inspired by, the works of Andocides. By comparing several passages from both orators, this paper argues that this is not necessarily the case. In terms of both language and content, these texts bear so close a resemblance to one another, that a direct influence does not seem beyond question. If Cicero had indeed, whether deliberately or otherwise, borrowed some ideas and/or phrases from Andocides, the absence of the latter's name in Cicero's extant writings can be explained in two different ways: (1) either certain expressions that occur in Andocides' speeches could have been known to Cicero from indirect tradition, (2) or Cicero was simply reluctant to admit to his acquaintance with the least esteemed of the ten Attic orators.

The ‘scrutiny of all the laws’ that Andocides invokes in his defence On the Mysteries is usually interpreted as a recodification with the aim of barring prosecution for the crimes of civil conflict. This article advances four theses against that traditional reading: (1) In Andocides' argument the Scrutiny was designed for a more practicable purpose, not to pardon crimes unpunished but to quash any further action against former atimoi, those penalized under the old regime but restored to rights in 403. In context, coming close upon the summary of Patrocleides' decree, ‘all the laws’ means all laws affecting atimoi. (2) The other evidence from inscriptions and literary testimony, for the Athenian Amnesty and similar agreements, supports this reading: the oath that closed the covenants, mê mnêsikakein, functions as a rule of estoppel or ‘no reprise’; it was not in itself a pledge of ‘political forgiveness’. In regard to the Scrutiny, as in Patrocleides' decree, the oath means that old penalties, now cancelled, can never again be enforced. (3) The Scrutiny itself was a reauthorization of the old laws for summary arrest and other standard remedies against atimoi who trespass or violate their restrictions. As a corollary to this re-enactment, the statute of limitations was introduced, ‘to apply the laws from Eucleides’: the rules punishing the disfranchised cannot be used against those whose liabilities were incurred before 403. (4) Teisamenus' decree for new legislation was prior to this revision; it is not the decree that Andocides read to the court as a document of the Scrutiny. An ancient editor simply inserted the wrong document. Teisamenus envisioned no alteration of the ‘Solonian Code’; the decree for Scrutiny was an unforeseen but necessary correction. These measures were successive reforms sorting out the new hierarchy of rules, a process whose complexity is attested in Diocles' law.

Andocides is generally not considered one of the best orators. To point up his flawed style, scholars have discussed a notoriously vindictive and humorous section in Andocides 1: in 124ff. Andocides describes the profligate lifestyle of his prosecutor, Callias III the Ceryx, the son of Hipponicus II and dadouchos of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The work transmitted to us as the fourth speech in the manuscripts of Andocides is an invective against Alcibiades on the occasion of the last ostracism to occur in Athens, the ostracism of Hyper bolus. Despite a challenging article by Raubitschek1 pointing to certain authentic-looking details in the speech, most scholars would probably now agree that [And.] 4 is neither by Andocides, nor a genuine speech delivered on the occasion of the last ostracism, but is most likely to be a product of the fourth century. But if this general feeling is correct, why and in what context was the speech written? When in the fourth century did rhetoricians spend their time composing works like [And.] 4?

In De myst. 1.11–18 (see also 1.25), Andokides reports a series of four judicial denunciations (μην⋯σεις), 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’ (1.16). A fourth denunciation was made by the slave Lydos.