Onomakles seems to have escaped or died before the day. Archeptolemos and Antiphon were brought to trial. The scanty fragments of the speech made by Antiphon in his own defence reveal only one item of its contents. One of the prosecutors, Apolexis, having asserted that Antiphon's grandfather had been a partisan of the Peisistratidae, Antiphon replied that his grandfather had not been punished after the expulsion of the tyrants, and could scarcely, therefore, have been one of their ‘body-guard ¹ .’ The other special topics are unknown; but their range, at least, is shown by the title under which the speech was extant. It was inscribed περὶ μεταστάσεως, On the Change of Government. It dealt, then, not merely with the matter specified in the eisangelia—the embassy to Sparta—but with the whole question of the Revolution. It is described by Thucydides as the greatest defence made in the memory of that age by a man on trial for his life. The story in the Eudemian Ethics ² , whether true or not, seems at any rate characteristic. Agathon, the tragic poet, praised the speech; and Antiphon—on whom sentence of death had passed—answered that a man who respects himself must care more what one good man thinks than what is thought by many nobodies.

The sentence ran thus:—

‘Found guilty of treason—Archeptolemos son of Hippodamos, of Agryle, being present: Antiphon son of Sophilos, of Rhamnus, being present. The award on these two men was—That they be delivered to the Eleven: that their property be confiscated and the goddess have the tithe: that their houses be razed and boundary-stones put on the sites, with the inscription, ‘the houses of Archeptolemos and Antiphon the traitors:’ that the two demarchs [of Agryle and Rhamnus] shall point out their houses. That it shall not be lawful to bury Archeptolemos and Antiphon at Athens or in any land of which the Athenians are masters. That Archeptolemos and Antiphon and their descendants, bastard or true-born, shall be infamous; and if a man adopt any one of the race of Archeptolemos or Antiphon, let the adopter be infamous. That this decree be written on a brazen column and put in the same place where the decrees about Phrynichos are set up ³ .’