beginning. When, then, Teucrus came from Megara, having obtained special permission, he gave what information he had about the mysteries and images, and denounced eighteen men. Of the men thus denounced, some fled, and others were arrested and put to death on the strength of this information. Those who fled have returned and are now here. Many relatives of those who were put to death are likewise present. I ask, then, any one of these, who will, to interrupt me in the course of my argument and show, if he can, that I was the cause of exile or death in a single case.

After this had taken place, Pisander and Charicles, who were members of the commission of inquiry, and had the reputation at that time of being loyal to the people, declared that what had been done was not the work of merely a few men, but part of a conspiracy to overthrow the commonwealth, and that they ought, therefore, to continue the investigation.

The city was then in a sorry plight. When the herald made proclamation for the Senate to enter the council chamber and hauled down the signal, the trouble began. Then it was that the conspirators fled from the market-place in fear of arrest. Then, too, Diocleides, elated with hope over the misfortunes of the city, brought an impeachment before the Senate, declaring that he knew the men who had mutilated the Hermae, and that they were thirty in number. He told how he chanced to be an eye-witness of the affair. Now I ask you, judges, to give your attention to this matter, and recall whether I speak the truth, refreshing each other's memories; for Diocleides spoke in your midst. To that fact you yourselves can testify.

Diocleides, you will remember, said that he had a slave at Laurium, and that he had occasion to go for a payment due to him. "He rose early in the morning, mistaking the hour, and started on his way. The moon was full. When he got

near the gateway of Dionysus, he saw several men going down from the Odeum into the orchestra of the theater. Afraid of them, he drew into the shade, and crouched down between the pillar and the column with the bronze statue of the general. He saw the men, about three hundred in number, standing around in groups of fifteen and twenty. Most of them he recognized in the light of the moon." Thus, in the first place, judges, he assumed this story—a most extraordinary one-in order, I fancy, that it might rest with him to include in this list any Athenian he pleased, or at pleasure to exempt him. After he had seen all this he went, he said, to Laurium, where he learned on the following day that the Hermae had been mutilated. He knew at once that it was the work of the men he had seen in the night. Returning to the city he learned that a commission of inquiry had been appointed and that a reward of a hundred minae had been offered for information. Seeing Euphemus, the brother of Callias, the son of Telecles, sitting in his smithy, he brought him into the Hephaesteum and told him how he had seen us on that night. Now, he said, he did not desire to receive a reward from the city rather than from us, if he could have us for friends. Euphemus said that he Idid well to tell him, and asked him to come to the house of Leogoras, that they might there confer with Andocides and the other needful persons. He came, he declared, on the following day, and knocked at the door. He met my father going out, who said to him: "Are you the visitor whom the company here expect? Well, you ought not to reject such friends," and with these words he was gone. In this way he sought to ruin my father, denouncing him as a confederate. He then stated that we told him we had decided to give him two talents instead of a hundred minae, as offered by the state for information, and that we pledged ourselves, in the event of our success, to make him one of

us. His reply, he said, was that he would think it over. We then asked him, he maintained, to come to the house of Callias, the son of Telecles, that he, too, might be present. Thus he sought to ruin also my kinsman. He came, he said, to the house of Callias, concluded an agreement with us, and gave us pledges on the Acropolis, but we failed to pay him, as agreed, the following month. He came, therefore, he said, to give information about what had been done. Such, judges, was his impeachment.

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Andocides, you see how then, heretofore, I had

Now, after we were all arrested and the prison doors were shut at night, there came the mother of one man, the sister of another, and the wife and children of another. Then they wept and bewailed their misfortune. And Charmides, a cousin of my own age, who had been brought up in our house from childhood, said to me: great our calamity is. Although, no wish to speak or to give you pain, yet I am now constrained to do so by our present evil. For all your friends and associates, except us, your relations, have either been put to death for the reasons on account of which we now perish, or have gone into exile, thereby condemning themselves. If, then, you know anything of this matter, tell it, and save first yourself, then your father, whom you ought to love exceedingly, then your brother-in-law, who married your only sister, then the rest of your numerous kinsmen and relatives, and finally me, who never grieved you in my whole life, but have ever been most eager to do whatever was for your interest."

Now when Charmides had said this, judges, and each of the others besought and supplicated me, I reflected how unhappy I was to have fallen into such misfortune. Was I to see my kinsmen put to death unjustly and their property confiscated, and see those who were in no sense to blame for what had been done have their names inscribed on col

umns as impious sinners against the gods? Was I further to see three hundred Athenians perish undeservedly, the city involved in calamity, and the citizens suspicious of one another? Was I, I ask, to sit by idly, and see all this, or was it my place to tell the people of Athens what I had heard from Euphiletus himself, the man who committed the outrage? I further reflected, judges, that of those who had wrought the deed of shame some had been put to death on the information of Teucrus, and others, having gone into exile, had sentence of death passed upon them in their absence. Four remained, who had not been informed against by Teucrus,- Panaetius, Chaeredamus, Diacritus, and Lysistratus. These men above all seemed likely to have been confederates of those against whom Diocleides had informed, since they were their intimate friends. For these men, then, safety was never secure; but over my own relatives hung certain destruction, unless some one told the people of Athens the actual facts. It seemed to me, therefore, better to deprive these four men of their country, who are still alive and have returned to enjoy their patrimony, than to see my own suffer an unjust death. Such were my reflections.

If now any of you, judges, had a preconceived idea that I gave information to ruin those men and save myself— an assertion that my enemies make in their attempt to asperse my character-examine that idea in the light of the facts. For I must now give a truthful account of my doings in the presence of the very men who perpetrated the crime and then fled. They know best whether I lie or speak the truth, and may confute me, if they can, in the course of my speech; for I appeal to them. But you must learn the facts. For in this trial, judges, nothing is so important for me as that, if acquitted, I should be acquitted with honor; and, further, that the general public should understand my whole conduct to have been absolutely free from baseness or cowardice.

I told what I had heard from Euphiletus through solicitude for my friends and kinsmen, through solicitude for the whole city, with courage and not cowardice. If, then, this is so, I ask you to acquit me and not to think me base.

Now consider for a judge ought to examine the facts by a human standard, as if the misfortune had been his own - what would any one of you have done? If it had been a question of death with honor or life with shame, you might condemn my conduct as cowardice. And yet many would have chosen life in preference to an honorable death. But here the case was the very reverse: by keeping silent I must have perished ignominiously in my innocence, and must also have permitted the destruction of my father, of my brother-in-law, of all my cousins and relations, whom I and no one else threatened with death, by concealing the guilt of others. The falsehoods of Diocleides had sent them to prison; their only hope of deliverance lay in the Athenians learning the whole truth. I was in danger, therefore, of becoming their murderer, if I failed to tell you what I had heard. I was also in danger of destroying three hundred Athenians, and of involving Athens in the most serious evils. This, then, was the prospect, if I were silent.

How different the prospect if I made known the truth! Then I should save myself, my father, and my kinsmen, and should deliver the city from dangers and misfortunes. Accordingly four men who participated in the crime were driven into exile through me. I had nothing, however, to do with the death or exile of the men against whom Teucrus had laid information. Considering all this, judges, I concluded that the least of the pressing evils was to tell the whole truth, and, by convicting Diocleides of falsifying, to have him punished-a man who sought to ruin us unjustly by deceiving the city, and who, for so doing, was proclaimed a public benefactor and received money from the state. I