Then they told him all they knew; how that after the departure of the fleet a sadness had fallen over everyone, partly reaction from the excitement of its preparation and its setting out, more from the awe that the outrage to the statues had produced. This feeling had changed to one of wrath and indignation, roused by those who bribed some of the meaner sort to bring false accusations. Then Agaristé, a strange woman, some distant relation of Alkibiades—at least, of the same stock—declared she saw him and Axiochos and Adeimantos make joke of the Eleusinian mysteries in the house of Charmides. ‘This woman’s story,’ added Biôtides, a stout Athenian sailor, ‘was so absurd, Kleibôn said, it would have been treated as an hysterical delusion at any other time, but then it worked the common people into a state of terrible alarm. This was increased when Lydos, a slave, turned, it was thought, unwittingly upon the oligarchic party, and swore by all the gods that he had seen the same thing done in the house of his master, Perikles; and amongst the sacrilegious hands was Leogoras, father of Andokides the orator.’ ‘Ha, ha!’ cried Alkibiades; ‘Leogoras, who breeds the finest pheasants in all Greece. I know the old man; and what said his fine son the orator?’ ‘Well, the Senate offered ten thousand drachmas and a pardon to anyone who would denounce the spoilers of the images,’ said Kolyphôn. ‘And then—and then a knave named Diokleides came in haste before the Senate and declared that, while he was journeying from Athens, on the night before the images of the god Hermes were cut, he saw about three hundred men close to the theatre of Dionysos, that they then separated into small bands, and that he would know them all again if he saw them. When he came back next day, it seems, he found the reward which had been offered by the Senate, and he went to Andokides, and threatened that if he did not give him twelve thousand drachmas he would denounce him and all his family. Andokides promised the money, but did not pay it, so he and his father were denounced and both imprisoned, besides a number of their relations. But the Senate having promised to pardon them if the son would confess, Andokides made a clean breast of it, and said he had been one of a large number who agreed to cut the statues. He gave the names of twenty-three others, all well-known citizens, as his accomplices. They were taken, condemned, and put to death, except a few who escaped. Andokides himself has got away, and many think those who were put to death, through his evidence, were innocent, and that the famous orator gave them up to shield his friends.’