X. ANTIPHON
1. Quintilian 3.1.11: Antiphon wrote down a speech before anybody else; nonetheless, he is believed to have both written a treatise himself and spoken excellently on his own behalf.
2. Sopater, Against Hermogenes: After Gorgias, Antiphon of Rhamnus, a student of Thucydides, is said to have written a treatise.
That Thucydides learned his rhetoric from Antiphon is backed up by the Life of Antiphon 7 (from Caecilius Caleactinus), Hermog. On Ideas 2 p. 414, 19 Sp., Tryphon Rh. gr. 3 p. 201 Sp., Marcell. Life of Thucydides 22.
3. Plato, Menexenos 236 A: But even a man less well taught than I, who had learnt his music from Lamprus and his rhetoric from Antiphon the Rhamnusian, —even such a one, I say, could none the less win credit by praising Athenians before an Athenian audience.
4. Antiphon 6.2: It would be unanimously agreed, I think, that the laws which deal with cases such as the present are the most admirable and righteous of laws. Not only have they the distinction of being the oldest in this country, but they have changed no more than the crime with which they are concerned; and that is the surest token of good laws, as time and experience show mankind what is imperfect. Hence you must not use the speech for the prosecution to discover whether your laws are good or bad: you must use laws to discover whether or not the speech for the prosecution is giving you a correct and lawful interpretation of the case. Ibid. 3: A case of this kind can be tried only once; and if it is wrongly decided against the defendant, justice and the facts cannot prevail against that decision. (4) Once you condemn him, a defendant must perforce accept your verdict, even if he was not the murderer or concerned in the crime. The law banishes him from his city, its temples, its games, and its sacrifices.
Ibid. 5: No one would venture either to disregard the sentence passed upon him because he was sure that he had had no part in the crime, or to disobey the law if he knew in his heart that he was guilty of such a deed. He has to submit to the verdict in defiance of the facts, or submit to the facts themselves, as the case may be, even if his victim has none to avenge him. (6) The laws, the oaths, the sacrifices, the proclamations, in fact the whole of the proceedings in connection with trials for murder differ as profoundly as they do from the proceedings elsewhere simply because it is of supreme importance that the facts at issue, upon which so much turns, should themselves be rightly interpreted. Such a right interpretation means vengeance for him who has been wronged; whereas to find an innocent man guilty of murder is a mistake, and a sinful mistake, which offends both gods and laws. Nor is it as serious for the prosecutor to accuse the wrong person as it is for you judges to reach a wrong verdict. The charge brought by the prosecutor is not in itself effective; whether it becomes so, depends upon you, sitting in judgement. On the other hand, if you yourselves arrive at a wrong verdict, you cannot rid yourselves of the responsibility for so doing by blaming someone else for that verdict. |
5.14: Yet it would be unanimously agreed, I think, that the laws which deal with cases such as the present are the most admirable and righteous of all laws. Not only have they the distinction of being the oldest in this country, but they have changed no more than the crime with which they are concerned; and that is the surest token of good laws, as time and experience show mankind what is imperfect. Hence you must not use the speech for the prosecution to discover whether your laws are good or bad: you must use the laws to discover whether or not the speech for the prosecution is giving you a correct and lawful interpretation of the case. Ibid. 87: In a trial for murder, {even} if judgement is wrongly given against the defendant, justice and the facts cannot prevail against that decision. Once you condemn me, I must perforce obey your verdict and the law.
(Then in the same tenor:)
Ιbid.87: No one would venture either to disregard the sentence passed upon him because he was sure that he had had no part in the crime, or to disobey the law if he knew in his heart that he was guilty of such a deed. He has to submit to the verdict in defiance of the facts, or submit to the facts themselves, as the case may be, above all if his victim has none to avenge him. (88) The laws, the oaths, the sacrifices, the proclamations, in fact the entire proceeding in connection with trials for murder differ as profoundly as they do from the proceedings elsewhere simply because it is of supreme importance that the facts at issue, upon which so much turns, should themselves be rightly interpreted. Such a right interpretation means vengeance for him who has been wronged; whereas to find an innocent man guilty of murder is a mistake, and a sinful mistake, which offends both gods and laws. (89) Nor is it as serious for the prosecutor to accuse the wrong person as it is for you jurors to reach a wrong verdict. The charge brought by the prosecutor is not in itself effective; whether it becomes so, depends upon you, sitting in judgement. On the other hand if you yourselves, when actually sitting in judgement, return a wrong verdict, you cannot rid yourselves of the responsibility for the mistake by blaming someone else for that verdict. |
Wilamowitz (Berl. S. B. 1900, 398 f.) thought that the entire first proem of speech 6 was taken from a collection of proems. However, since part of the content of that proem is found in the middle of speech 5, and another part in its epilogue, it is likely that what belonged to the proem or epilogue proper could have been augmented with a collection of topoi that, as Cicero says, contained examples of praise and criticism. In the same way, in the passages we have excerpted one first finds a citation of the laws (with which you can compare what is said in Demosthenes Against Midias 48), and then from the quality of the laws an argument is made that speeches must be judged based on the laws, not the law based on speeches. Another thesis is that the judges’ rulings were so unappealable that even innocent people are bound by a judgement even if it contradicts the truth. This is why capital trials were riddled with safeguards of that magnitude: the sentence had the gravest consequences. Nor is it equally important whether the accuser says something wrong or the judge does, since the former can be set straight by the judgment itself, the latter cannot. Hence judges must apply the utmost caution. In this case we no longer have anything other than mere argument: from the thesis is drawn some conclusion with claims that can be made in just about any trial, and not only in the proems. In the proem to the sixth speech, however, in the middle of those reasonings is inserted a new one – albeit of the same kind, that is, a topos, as we call it, from which the accused can benefit: (par. 4 f.) ‘For the law possesses such coercive force that even if one kills somebody he owns and there is no possible prosecutor [under the law of Draco], he will, for fear of both custom and the gods, purify himself and stay clear of the things the law enumerates [as being off-limits for a killer], hoping for the best if he acts in this way. For a person’s life relies for the most part on hope; and if one acts impiously and violates divine law, he will deprive himself of that very hope which is a human being’s greatest good…’
From such passages proems too could be augmented; so, for instance, the proem of Andocides’ On the Mysteries is made up of parts of which some are taken from a proem collection, some from somewhere else and inserted into the proem proper.
For, as Andocides puts it (1.3): ‘You would reasonably hold the same view about those who willingly undertake dangerous endeavours as they do about themselves. For whenever one does not want to risk going to court because he acknowledges his guilt, of course you judges think the same about them; but then whenever one does go to trial, trusting that he has done no wrong, you too should have the same opinion of him as he does and not condemn him in advance.’
Such words, if set in the proem, can arouse sympathy, but they would with more legitimacy find a place in some argument. But in general Antiphon’s and Andocides’ proems do preempt a great deal that we would much rather expect to see in arguments. Hence their size, nor should we suspect interpolation (rightly Hiddemann, De Antiphontis etc. prooemiis, Diss. Monast. 1913, 14 f.). Lysias’ proems are short, so that in his works one can notice the progress of the art.
5. Pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators 832B-E: Antiphon was Sophilus’ father, from the deme Rhamnus. […] He was the first to publish treatises on rhetoric, since he was quick-witted, wherefore he was also nicknamed “Nestor”.
So also Photius Cod. 259 p. 486 a 11 B
6. Pollux, IV 143: ‘ἀπαράσκευος [“unprepared”] mind’ says Antiphon in his book On Truth, but he writes ἀπαρασκεύαστος in his treatises on rhetoric. These, however, are commonly seen as spurious. – The Antiatticist: ‘ἀπαρασκεύαστον’ is said by Antiphon in the third book of his treatise On Rhetoric.
7. Longinus, On Rhetoric 9.576 W.: Antiphon writes in his treatises On Rhetoric that it is natural for us to perceive what is there, is present and near us, but it is not natural to maintain a clear impression of things after they have gone by..
These words pertain to the art of memory.
8. Ammonius, On Seemingly Synonymous Words: Evidence and signs are different things. Antiphon says in his treatise that past events are believed on the grounds of evidence, future ones on the grounds of signs.
Cf. Eranius Philo 1731 Valck., who omits the writer’s name. Andocides 3.2: ‘We must, Athenian gentlemen, use what has happened before as evidence of what is about to happen;’ Euripides fr. inc. 1073.6: ‘Trusting the future based on the present, they regarded their destiny as a test in suffering.’ Dinarchus Against Demosthenes 33: ‘Deducing the future from what has happened.’ Apart from that, compare what is collected below among the anonymous (C 36).
9. Galen, commentary on Hippokrates 19.66 K.: That each one of those who dealt in speeches would see fit to make up new words is shown clearly enough by Antiphon, too, who gives lessons about just how to do this.
10. The Antiatticist, Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 78.6: ‘ἀστοργία, φιλοστοργία, στοργή’ are used in the second book of Antipho’s On Rhetoric.
11. The Antiatticist, Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 110.33: ‘ὀλιγοφιλίαν’ is said by Antiphon in the third book. – Pollux: Antiphon writes πολυφιλίαν and ‘ὀλιγοφιλίαν’.
12. Philodemus, On Poems 6 Ch. 187.5: Since it was observed from what we reckoned before and it had not been researched in such a way as though we did not happen to discover anything beyond other people’s knowledge about how our hearing is accustomed by simple as well as composite letters, it becomes clear that other authors are talking nonsense when they claim the same letters or different ones to be pleasant or unpleasant, as does one Antiphon, a man of the old days, whether he wanted to be a rhetorician or even a philosopher.
See also Th. Gomperz, Philodem und die aesthetischen Schriften der Herc. Bibliothek, Wiener S. B. phil.-hist. Kl. CXXIII/VI p. 49 n. 3.
Prologues and Epilogues
13. Suda s.v. aisthesthai [“perceive”]: About perception Antiphon writes in the Prologues as follows: “I filed this public prosecution after being wronged by this man, Zeus knows, many times, but also after seeing that you people have been wronged even more and so have all other citizens. – s. v. hama [“at the same time”]: In Antiphon ‘hama’ is used with reference to the same action: for instance, he says in the Prologues: “But if my position appears stronger and at the same time I provide testimony of my virtue…”
14. Photius and Suda s. v. μοχθηρός: Antiphon, the oldest of the rhetoricians, used the word μοχθηρός not to refer to a bad person being brought to court to be prosecuted, but to a father litigating over the death of his son. And he writes the following in On Prologues and Epilogues: “And I, the μοχθηρός, who should be dead now, live to be the laughing-stock of my enemies.”
15. Cicero, Brutus 12.27: This same Gorgias allegedly did it by writing down the praises and reproofs of each individual thing […]; and Antiphon of Rhamnus is said to have written similar things.
Cf. Antiphon 5.14: ‘And yet I suppose everybody would agree that the laws that are on the books on such matters are the most beautiful and most god-fearing of all laws. For one, they are the most ancient in this land; then they have been the same on this subject forever, which is the greatest indication that a law is well drafted. Indeed, time and experience tell people what is not good,’ words that are repeated almost identically in 6.2.