If we may believe the Pseudo-Plutarch (Vit. x, Orator, p. 834), Andokidês had on a previous occasion been guilty of drunken irregularity and damaging a statue. [304] Thucyd. vi, 60. ἐνταῦθα ἀναπείθεται ~εἷς τῶν δεδεμένων, ὅσπερ ἐδόκει αἰτιώτατος εἶναι~, ὑπὸ τῶν ξυνδεσμωτῶν τινὸς, εἴτε ἄρα καὶ τὰ ὄντα μηνῦσαι, εἴτε καὶ οὔ· ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα γὰρ εἰκάζεται· τὸ δὲ σαφὲς οὐδεὶς οὔτε τότε οὔτε ὕστερον ἔχει εἰπεῖν περὶ τῶν δρασάντων τὸ ἔργον. If the statement of Andokidês in the Oratio de Mysteriis is correct, the deposition previously given by Teukrus the metic must have been a true one; though this man is commonly denounced among the lying witnesses (see the words of the comic writer Phrynichus ap. Plutarch, Alkib. c. 20). Thucydidês refuses even to mention the name of Andokidês, and expresses himself with more than usual reserve about this dark transaction, as if he were afraid of giving offence to great Athenian families. The bitter feuds which it left behind at Athens, for years afterwards, are shown in the two orations of Lysias and of Andokidês. If the story of Didymus be true, that Thucydidês after his return from exile to Athens died by a violent death (see Biogr. Thucyd. p. xvii. ed. Arnold), it would seem probable that all his reserve did not protect him against private enmities arising out of his historical assertions. That which is at once most important and most incontestable, is the effect produced by the revelations of Andokidês, true or false, on the public mind at Athens. He was a young man of rank and wealth in the city, belonging to the sacred family of the Kerykes,—said to trace his pedigree to the hero Odysseus,—and invested on a previous occasion with an important naval command; whereas the preceding informers had been metics and slaves. Moreover, he was making confession of his own guilt. Hence the people received his communications with implicit confidence. They were delighted to have got to the bottom of the terrible mystery: and the public mind subsided from its furious terrors into comparative tranquillity. The citizens again began to think themselves in safety and to resume their habitual confidence in each other, while the hoplites everywhere on guard were allowed to return to their homes.[305] All the prisoners in custody on suspicion, except those against whom Andokidês informed were forthwith released: those who had fled out of apprehension, were allowed to return; while those whom he named as guilty, were tried, convicted, and put to death. Such of them as had already fled, were condemned to death in their absence, and a reward offered for their heads.[306] And though discerning men were not satisfied with the evidence upon which these sentences were pronounced, yet the general public fully believed themselves to have punished the real offenders, and were thus inexpressibly relieved from the depressing sense of unexpiated insult to the gods, as well