9
He has carried audacity to such a pitch that he actually refers to the law we have made regarding him as one that has been abolished,A decree of Isotimides excluded from the market-place and the temples those impious persons who had obtained immunity by laying information against others. and claims liberty henceforth to enter the market-place and the templeseven today in the Council House of the Athenians.
10
Yet Pericles, they say, advised you once that in dealing with impious persons you should enforce against them not only the written but the unwritten laws also, which the EumolpidaeThe hereditary priests of Eleusis, who pronounced orally on cases of conscience, etc., and were the repositories of traditional, as distance from codified, custom. follow in their exposition, and which no one has yet had the authority to abolish or the audacity to gainsay,—laws whose very author is unknown: he judged that they would thus pay the penalty, not merely to men, but also to the gods.
11
But Andocides has shown such contempt for the gods and for those whose duty it is to avenge them, that before he had been resident in the city ten days he instituted proceedings for impiety before the king-archon, and lodged his complaint,(πρόσκλησις) was the citation of the person accused, and λῆξις was the formal complaint before the magistrate. though he was Andocides, and had not only done what that person has done with regard to the gods, but asserted—and here you should give your closest attention—that Archippus was guilty of an impiety against the Hermes of his house. Archippus countered this with a sworn statement that the Hermes was sound and entire and had in no way been treated like the other figures of the god:
12
but at the same time, to avoid being troubled by a man of Andocides’ sort, he got his release by a payment of money. Well now, since Andocides has sought to exact a penalty from another for impiety, surely justice and piety require that others should exact one from him.
