4
I would ask you, if you allow Andocides to get off now unscathed from this trial, and to attend for drawing the lots for the nine archons, and to be elected king-archon,The king-archon’s functions were mainly religious, and were especially concerned with the Mysteries. shall we not see him performing sacrifices and offering prayers on your behalf according to ancestral custom, sometimes in the Eleusinium here,As distinguished from the sanctuary at Eleusis. sometimes in the temple at Eleusis, and overseeing the celebration of the Mysteries, to prevent the commission of any offence or impiety concerning the sacred things?
5
And what, think you, will be the feelings of the initiated who arrive for the rite, when they see who the king is, and remember all his impious acts; or what the thoughts of the other Greeks who come for this celebration, purposing either to sacrifice or to attend in stateReligious envoys came either as spectators or to give notice of a festival about to he held elsewhere. at that great assembly?
