In marked contrast to the dignity of Antiphon, Andocides from time to time lapses into scurrility, dragging into his speech discreditable anecdotes relating to his opponents which are quite irrelevant to his proper subject and merely serve to raise a laugh at the moment. Thus the long recital about the domestic affairs of Callias (§§ 123-130) has no bearing at all on the trial. A man whose father has been three times unhappily married may still be a trustworthy witness. The introduction of the irrelevant story is then quite unjustifiable, but, since such examples of bad taste were freely tolerated at Athens, it was worth while to make a score by such foul hitting, especially if one could deliver the blows as neatly as in the following passage: ‘At the mother’s request, the relations took the child to the altar at the time of the Apaturia. They brought a victim, and requested Callias to perform the sacrifice. He asked who was the father of the child. “Callias, the son of Hipponicus.”—“But I’m Callias.”—“Yes, and it’s your child.”’[107] There is more to be said in justification of the attack on Epichares. To prove, or to assert violently, that his accuser was an enemy of the democracy and a person of vile character formed a presumption in favour of the defendant. Demosthenes himself made a custom of such practices, and was not less unscrupulous or less irrelevant than Andocides: ‘But Epichares, who is the worst of them all, and wants to keep up his reputation, and so acts vindictively against himself—for he was a member of the Council in the time of the Thirty; and what is the provision in the law which is inscribed on the pillar in front of the Council room? “Whosoever shall hold office in the city when the democracy has been overthrown, may be slain without penalty, and his slayer shall be free from blood-guiltiness, and shall possess the property of the slain.” Surely then, Epichares, any one who slays you now will have clean hands, according to Solon’s law? Let me have the law on the pillar read aloud?’[108] But Andocides in such cases certainly violates the laws of good taste, and in the matter of this personal abuse, though less fertile in vocabulary, is a worthy forerunner of the great orators. His scurrility is hardly excused by the ingenuity of its epigrammatic form: ‘You jackal, you common informer! ... are you allowed to live and prowl about the city? Little do you deserve it; under the democracy you lived by the informer’s trade; under the oligarchy, for fear of being forced to give up the money you had made by informing, you were a menial of the Thirty....’[109] and again: ‘One result of your decision to observe the present laws is that he has been restored from exile to citizenship, and from legal disability to the free exercise of the informer’s trade.’[110]