Editing Antiphon (orator) (section)

==Life==

=== Early Life ===
Antiphon was born around 480 and from an old wealthy family from the deme Rhamnus.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |url=https://doi.org/10.7560/728417 |title=Antiphon the Athenian |date=2002 |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=978-0-292-79645-4}}</ref> Though [[Pseudo-Plutarch]] says he was born at the time of Persian wars in ''Live of the Ten Orators'', [[Martin Ostwald|Ostwald]] believed the date of Antiphon’s birth is inconsistent with the age when he began publishing his speeches, which is about sixty, and his involvement in the oligarchic revolution, which is about seventy.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Roisman, Joseph, and Ian Worthington |title=Lives of the Attic Orators: Texts from Pseudo-Plutarch, Photius, and the Suda |date=2015}}</ref> Therefore, he would lower Antiphon’s date of birth by a decade, which is 470.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ostwald |first=Martin |title=From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society, and Politics in Fifth-Century Athens |publisher=Univ of California Press |year=1986}}</ref> But scholars generally accepted the year of 480.

Antiphon’s father, Sophilus, was a Sophist who owned a school. So scholars consider he learned the skills of public speaking from his father. While [[Pseudo-Plutarch|Plutarch]] also mentioned he pursued the career of a teacher in his early days, some historians expected him to take over his father’s school when he grew up.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Edwards |first=Michael J. |date=1998 |title=Notes on Pseudo-Plutarch's Life of Antiphon |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/639753 |journal=The Classical Quarterly |volume=48 |issue=1 |pages=82–92 |issn=0009-8388}}</ref>

In addition to his sophist father, the political climate in his childhood fostered his interest in political and legal affairs. The institution of [[Athenian democracy]] was established around 450 or later, and Antiphon observed the development of democracy closely in his childhood.<ref name=":0" /> All these factors made him a renowned thinker in Athens. He also made opinions on various issues like geometry, cosmology, and the pseudo-science of dream interpretation.<ref name=":0" />

=== Career ===
Antiphon  was a [[politician|statesman]] who took up [[rhetoric]] as a profession.He first started as a teacher teaching rhetoric and began his forensic career later. He wrote his early famous works of Tetralogies with his interest in the philosophy of justice and the Athenian legal system. He continued his teaching career afterward.

In the fifth century, public speaking was a common practice. The Greeks valued impromptu speaking over written discourse, [[Alcidamas]] argued in ''On Sophists'' that the best speeches are the ones ‘least like those are written.’<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gagarin, Michael, and Paul Woodruff |title=Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1995}}</ref>As a result, no speaker considered composing their speech for someone else or preparing it beforehand. Or even if there were written speeches, they failed to withstand the stringent requirements of Athenian or critical taste.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Edwards |first=Michael J. |date=2000 |title=Antiphon and the Beginnings of Athenian Literary Oratory |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/880253 |journal=Rhetorica |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=227–242 |doi=10.1525/rh.2000.18.3.227 |issn=1533-8541|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Writing speeches was, therefore, a bold idea that was controversial at the time.

Antiphon became the first to write forensic speeches for publication. He was well-known for his love of money, as declared by [[Plato]] in his ''Peisandros''.<ref name=":02">{{Cite journal |last=Edwards |first=Michael J. |date=2000-08-01 |title=Antiphon and the Beginnings of Athenian Literary Oratory |url=https://online.ucpress.edu/rhetorica/article/18/3/227/82187/Antiphon-and-the-Beginnings-of-Athenian-Literary |journal=Rhetorica |language=en |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=227–242 |doi=10.1525/rh.2000.18.3.227 |issn=0734-8584|url-access=subscription }}</ref> And the [[Archidamian War]] had left his family in poverty, so he looked for an additional occupation of composing speeches.<ref name=":02" /> As suggested by [[Thucydides]], Antiphon ‘was not willingly to come forward before the assembly or any other public arena, but was the object of the people’s suspicion on account of a reputation for cleverness,’ but ‘he was the one who could help the most if somebody asked for advice.’<ref>{{Citation |last=Thucydides |editor-first1=Martin |editor-first2=P. J. |editor-last1=Hammond |editor-last2=Rhodes |title=History of the Peloponnesian War |date=2009-06-11 |work=Oxford World's Classics: Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00266021 |access-date=2025-03-26 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/oseo/instance.00266021 |isbn=978-0-19-282191-1|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Antiphon acquired enough reputation to start his [[Logographer (history)|logographic]] business, fragments of his lost speeches revealed that Antiphon traveled far and had a wide range of acquaintances, including the general [[Demosthenes (general)|Demosthenes]] and [[Alcibiades]] as clients.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://doi.org/10.7560/728080 |title=Antiphon and Andocides |date=1998 |publisher=University of Texas Press |doi=10.7560/728080 |isbn=978-0-292-79911-0}}</ref>There were arguments about whether he was the first logographer in Greece, there is no doubt that he was the first to write speeches for money.<ref name=":02" />

He continued to educate, participate in complicated conversations and arguments, and converse with his friends about Athens' political issues in the final 20 years of his life. And more crucially, he stayed behind the scenes to counsel litigants. His chief business was that of a [[logographer (legal)|logographer]] ({{lang|grc|λογογράφος}}), that is a professional speech-writer. He wrote for those who felt incompetent to conduct their own cases—all disputants were obliged to do so—without expert assistance. Fifteen of Antiphon's speeches are extant: twelve are mere school exercises on fictitious cases, divided into [[tetralogies]], each comprising two speeches for prosecution and defence&mdash;accusation, defence, reply, counter-reply; three refer to actual legal processes.  All deal with cases of [[homicide]] ({{lang|grc|φονικαὶ δίκαι}}). Antiphon is also said to have composed a {{lang|grc|Τέχνη}} or art of Rhetoric.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Antiphon|volume=2|page=133}}</ref>

=== Death ===
Antiphon was active in political affairs in [[Athens]], and, as a zealous supporter of the [[oligarchical]] party, was largely responsible for the establishment of the [[The Four Hundred (oligarchy)|Four Hundred]] in 411 (see [[Theramenes]]).

After the Athenians were defeated by [[Sparta]] in [[Sicily]] in 413, Antiphon and a group of [[Aristocracy|aristocrats]] staged a coup led by four hundred oligarchs in 411. But this government was overthrown quickly as its chief proponent, [[Phrynichus (oligarch)|Phrynichus]], was assassinated.<ref name=":2" />  Members of the Four Hundred were charged for their involvement in an embassy to Sparta near the end of the Four Hundred brief rule. They were found guilty and given the following sentences: execution, property seizure, loss of burial privileges, and loss of citizenship rights for their descendants.<ref name=":1" />

Although most of Antiphon’s acquaintances fled, he stayed in Athens and made his last speech for his defense, ''On the Revolution''. Though some of the speech did not survive antiquity, leaving fragments of it what we have today, it was particularly admired by Thucydides, ‘Of all the men up to my time…he seems to me to have made the best defense in a capital case.’<ref>{{Citation |last=Thucydides |title=History of the Peloponnesian War |date=2009-06-11 |work=Oxford World's Classics: Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00266021 |access-date=2025-03-27 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-282191-1}}</ref>


[[Thucydides]] famously characterized Antiphon's skills, influence, and reputation:
{{quote|...He who concerted the whole affair [of the 411 coup], and prepared the way for the catastrophe, and who had given the greatest thought to the matter, was Antiphon, one of the best men of his day in Athens; who, with a head to contrive measures and a tongue to recommend them, did not willingly come forward in the assembly or upon any public scene, being ill-looked upon by the multitude owing to his reputation for cleverness; and who yet was the one man best able to aid in the courts, or before the assembly, the suitors who required his opinion. Indeed, when he was afterwards himself tried for his life on the charge of having been concerned in setting up this very government, when the Four Hundred were overthrown and hardly dealt with by the commons, he made what would seem to be the best defence of any known up to my time.|Thucydides, ''Histories'' 8.68<ref>trans. by [[Richard Crawley]], revised by [[Robert B. Strassler]], 1996</ref>}}
Antiphon was accused of [[treason]] and condemned to death.<ref name="EB1911" /> Even though the indictment involved the ambassador to Sparta, he denied potential motivations for the alleged crime of taking part in an oligarchic coup. He also addressed the more general accusation of taking part in the [[The Four Hundred (oligarchy)|Four Hundred]] Coup and created a convincing case based on the likelihood that his line of work would flourish in a democracy.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Giorgini |first=Giovanni |date=2023-03-24 |title=The Cosmopolitanism of the Early Sophists: The Case of Hippias and Antiphon |journal=Humanities |language=en |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=30 |doi=10.3390/h12020030 |doi-access=free |issn=2076-0787}}</ref> Given his inability to deny his obvious involvement in the coup, he might have continued by claiming that he wanted an enhanced democracy rather than an oligarchy.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |url=https://doi.org/10.7560/728080 |title=Antiphon and Andocides |date=1998 |publisher=University of Texas Press |doi=10.7560/728080 |isbn=978-0-292-79911-0}}</ref>

In the end, Antiphon’s plea failed, and he was executed. Some scholars believed the aim of his speech was not to succeed but to present and leave for future generations a deft piece of sophistry regarding his role in the collapse of democracy.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Arnaoutoglou |first=Ilias |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1n3587r?turn_away=true |title=Law, Rhetoric and Comedy in Classical Athens: Essays in Honour of Douglas M. MacDowell |last2=Arnott |first2=W.G. |last3=Carawan |first3=Edwin |last4=Carey |first4=Christopher |last5=Dover |first5=Sir Kenneth |last6=Edwards |first6=Michael J. |last7=Gagarin |first7=Michael |last8=Mirhady |first8=David C. |last9=Prandi |first9=Luisa |date=2004 |publisher=Classical Press of Wales |isbn=978-0-9543845-5-5 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv1n3587r.11}}</ref>

Antiphon may be regarded as the founder of political [[Public speaking|oratory]], but he never addressed the people himself except on the occasion of his trial. Fragments of his speech then, delivered in defense of his policy (called {{lang|grc|Περὶ μεταστάσεως}}) have been edited by J. Nicole (1907) from an [[Egypt]]ian [[papyrus]].<ref name="EB1911" />