Andocides

Andocides was born around 440 BCE to Leogoras, a member of an aristocratic clan associated with the Kerykes and the Eleusinian Mysteries. He grew up in a city flush with tribute and ambitious building, where pedigree still primed opportunity even as procedures broadened participation. Commerce and politics braided in his life; he traveled widely, learned the arts of persuasion, and cultivated connections across factions—a talent that would both save and stain him.

He entered the timeline’s foreground during the Peloponnesian War’s darkest intrigues. In 415 BCE the city awoke to mutilated Herms and accusations of impiety; Andocides, caught up in the scandal, turned informer and slipped into exile. After oligarchic experiments—the Four Hundred in 411 and the Thirty in 404—Athens restored its democracy in 403, revised its laws, and swore to let past wrongs die. Andocides’ speeches become guides to this fragile rehabilitation. In 400 BCE, prosecuted for impiety upon returning, he delivered On the Mysteries, arguing that the Amnesty and the city’s binding oaths—he cites the Demophantos decree of 410—shielded him and the restored order. He invokes not just statutes but the moral architecture of reconciliation: published laws at the Stoa Basileios, nomothesia to clarify statutes, and the oath to defend the democracy as a living promise. He later appears in peace politics, urging pragmatism in dealings with Sparta.

Andocides navigated distrust on all sides. To democrats, he bore the mark of an informer; to oligarchs, that of a traitor to class. He answered with plain style rather than ornate display—case facts, documentary citations, and appeals to the letter and spirit of new law. Personally, he was resilient and shrewd, surviving prosecutions that sank others. He believed, perhaps more than he let on, that only rules—amnesty, published statutes, oaths—could pacify the city’s long memory and make public life predictable again.

His legacy is not towering eloquence but documentary value. Through his trials we glimpse how a wounded democracy re‑stitched itself: the Assembly and Council working in tandem, the law code revised, the oath against tyranny reaffirmed in practice. He shows that oaths and procedures were more than ceremony—they were security devices after coups and civil blood. In answering this timeline’s central question, Andocides supplies the legal answer: yes, ordinary citizens can rule themselves, but only if they bind their hands to forgive, to remember the law, and to punish threats to the politeia without reopening civil war.