Editing Antiphon (orator) (section)

=== 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" />