Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/214

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196 HISTORY OF GKKKCE. information. A vote of the senate was immediately passed to invite him. He denounced by name eleven persons as having been concerned, jointly with himself, in the mock-celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, and eighteen different persons, himself not being one, as the violators of the Hermae. A woman named Agariste, daughter of Alkmasonides, these names bespeak her great rank and familj in the city, deposed farther that Alki- biades, Axiochus, and Adeimantus, had gone through a parody of the mysteries in a similar manner, in the house of Charmides. And lastly Lydus, slave of a citizen named Pherekles, stated that the like scene had been enacted in the house of his master in the deme Themakus, giving the names of the parties present, one of whom though asleep, and unconscious of what was passing he stated to be Leogoras, the father of Andokides. 1 Of the parties named in these different depositions, the greater number seem to have fled from the city at once ; but all who re- mained were put into prison to stand future trial. 2 Those inform- 1 Andokides de Mysteriis, sects. 14, 15, 35. In reference to the deposi- tion of Agariste, Andokides again includes Alkibiades among those who fled into banishment in consequence of it. Unless we are to suppose another Alkibiades, not the general in Sicily, this statement cannot be true. There was another Alkibiades, of the deme Phegus : but Andokides in mentioning him afterwards (sect. 65), specifies his deme. He was cousin of Alkibiades, and was in exile at the same time with him (Xenoph. Hellen. 1,2,13).

  • Andokides (sects. 13-34) affirms that some of the persons, accused by

Tcuknis as mntilators of the Herma:, were put to death upon his deposi- tion. But I contest his accuracy on this point. For Thucydides recog- nizes no one as having been pu- to death except those against whom An- dokides himself informed (see /i, 27, 53, 61). He dwells particularly upon the number of persons, and persons of excellent character, imprisoned on suspicion ; but he mentions none as having been put to death except those against whom Andokides gave testimony. He describes it as a great harshness, and as an extraordinary proof of the reigning excitement, that the Athenians should have detained so many persons upon suspicion, on the evidence of informers not entitled to credence. But he would not have specified this detention as extraordinary harshness, if the Athenians had gone so far as to put individuals to death upon the same evidence. Besides, to put these men to death would have defeated their own object, the full and entire disclosure of the plot and the conspirators. The ignorance in

which they were of tlnir internal enemies, was tmonjj the most agonizing