I.
ANTIPHON
Antiphon was the son of Sophilus, and his deme was Rhamnus. He was a pupil of his father (for his father was a sophist, and it is said that Alcibiades as a boy attended his school), and having acquired power in speaking - as some think, through his own natural ability - he entered upon a public career. And he set up a school and had his disagreement with Socrates on the subject of words, not in a contentious spirit, but for the sake of argument, as Xenophon has narrated in his
Memoirs.
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And he wrote some speeches for citizens who wanted them for their suits in the law-courts, being the first who practised this profession, as some say. At any rate no legal oration is extant of any of those who lived before his time, nor of his contemporaries either, because the custom of speech-writing had not yet arisen; there is none by Themistocles, Aristeides, or Pericles, although the times afforded them many opportunities and also occasions when such speeches were needed. And it was not for lack of ability that they refrained from such speech-writing, as is evident from what is said by the historians about each of the abovementioned orators. Yet all those whom we are able to record as having practised this kind of speeches, going back to the earliest occurrence, will be found to have followed Antiphon when he was already old; I mean such as Alcibiades, Critias, Lysias, and Archinus. He was also the first to publish rules of the art of oratory, being of sharp intellect, and for this reason he was nicknamed Nestor.
And Caecilius, in the treatise he compiled about him, conjectures from the terms in which Antiphon is praised in the work of the historian Thucydides that he was the latter’s teacher.
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In his speeches he is accurate and persuasive, clever in invention, ingenious in handling perplexing cases; he attacks unexpectedly, and he addresses his arguments to both the laws and the emotions, aiming especially at propriety. He was born at the time of the Persian wars and of the sophist Gorgias, who was somewhat older than he; and his life extended until the destruction of the democracy by the Four Hundred,
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in causing which he seems himself to have had a part, at one time by being trierarch
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of two ships, at another by being general
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and gaining many victories in battle and winning important alliances for the Four Hundred, by arming the men of military age, by manning sixty triremes, and by being on every occasion their envoy to Lacedaemon at the time when Eëtioneia had been fortified.
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And after the overthrow of the Four Hundred he was indicted along with Archeptolemus, one of the Four Hundred, was found guilty, subjected to the punishments prescribed for traitors, thrown out unburied, and inscribed along with his descendants in the list of the disfranchised. But some tell us that he was put to death by the Thirty,
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as Lysias says in his speech in defence of Antiphon’s daughter; for he had a daughter whom Callaeschrus claimed in marriage by legal process. And that he was put to death by the Thirty is told also by Theopompus in the fifteenth book of his
Philippics
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; but that must have been another Antiphon, the son of Lysidonides, whom Cratinus also, in his play
The Flask, mentions as a rascal; for how could a man who had died previously and had been put to death by the Four Hundred be living again in the time of the Thirty? But there is also another story of his death: that he sailed as envoy to Syracuse when the tyranny of Dionysius the First was at its height, and at a convivial gathering the question arose what bronze was the best; then when most of the guests disagreed, he said that bronze was the best from which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton were made; and when Dionysius heard this, suspecting that the remark was intended to encourage an attack upon himself, he ordered that Antiphon be put to death. But others say that he was angry because Antiphon made fun of his tragedies.
There are current sixty orations ascribed to this orator, twenty-five of which Caecilius says are spurious. He is ridiculed as a lover of money by Plato in his
Peisander.
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And he is said to have written tragedies both by himself and in collaboration with the tyrant Dionysius. But while he was still busy with poetry he invented a method of curing distress, just as physicians have a treatment for those who are ill; and at Corinth, fitting up a room near the market-place, he wrote on the door that he could cure by words those who were in distress; and by asking questions and finding out the causes of their condition he consoled those in trouble. But thinking this art was unworthy of him he turned to oratory. There are some who ascribe also to Antiphon the book
On Poets by Glaucus of Rhegium.
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His most admired orations are the one concerning Herodes, that against Erasistratus about the peacocks, that on the Indictment, which he wrote in his own defence, and that against the general Demosthenes for moving an illegal measure. He wrote also a speech against the general Hippocrates and caused him to be convicted by default.
Caecilius has appended a decree passed in the archonship of Theopompus,
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the year in which the Four Hundred were overthrown, according to which the senate voted the trial of Antiphon:
Voted by the senate on the twenty-first day of the prytany. Demonicus of Alopecê was secretary, Philostratus of Pallenê was president. Andron moved in regard to the men whom the generals denounce for acting to the detriment of the State of the Athenians while serving as envoys to Lacedaemon and for sailing from the camp in a ship of the enemy and for having passed by land through Deceleia, namely Archeptolemus, Onomacles, and Antiphon, that they be arrested and brought before the court for trial. And the generals, with those members of the senate whom they shall co-opt to the number of ten, are directed to produce them in court, that they may be present at the trial. And the Thesmothetae
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shall summon them to-morrow, and when the summonses have been returned to the court, they shall propose that the chosen prosecutors and the generals and others, if anyone so desire, shall accuse them of treason; and whomsoever the court may convict, he shall be treated in accordance with the law which has been passed relating to traitors.
Under this enactment the judgement is written:
Archeptolemus, son of Hippodamus, of Agryle, and Antiphon, son of Sophilus, of Rhamnus, both being present, were found guilty of treason. The sentence passed upon them was that they be handed over to the Eleven for execution, that their belongings be confiscated and ten per cent thereof be given to the Goddess, that their houses be torn down and boundary-stones be set up on their sites with the inscription
Land of Archeptolemus and Antiphon the two traitors; and that the two demarchs make a declaration of their property; and that it be forbidden to bury Archeptolemus and Antiphon at Athens or in any place ruled by the Athenians; and that Archeptolemus and Antiphon be attainted, and also their descendants legitimate and illegitimate; and that if anyone shall adopt any descendant of Archeptolemus or Antiphon, he who so adopts shall be attainted; and that this be inscribed on a bronze tablet, which shall be set up where the decrees relating to Phrynichus are placed.
Vitae decem oratorum. Plutarch. Harold North Fowler (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1936.
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