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Antiphon, the son of Sophilus, by descent a Rhamnusian, was his father’s scholar; for Sophilus kept a rhetoric school, to which it is reported that Alcibiades himself had recourse in his youth. Having attained to competent measure of knowledge and eloquence,—and that, as some believe, from his own natural ingenuity,—he dedicated his study chiefly to affairs of state. And yet he was for some time conversant in the schools, and had a controversy with Socrates the philosopher about the art of disputing,—not so much for the sake of contention as for the profit of arguing, as Xenophon tells us in his Commentaries of Socrates. At the request of some citizens, he wrote orations by which they defended their suits at law. Some say that he was the first that ever did any thing of this nature. For it is certain there is not one juridical oration extant written by any orator that lived before him, nor by his contemporaries either, as Themistocles, Aristides, and Pericles; though the times gave them opportunity, and there was need enough of their labor in such business. Not that we are to impute it to their want of parts that they did nothing in this way, for we may inform ourselves of the contrary from what historians relate of each of them. Besides, if we inspect the most ancient of those known in history who had the same form and method in their pleadings, such as Alcibiades, Critias, Lysias, and Archinous, we shall find that they all followed Antiphon when he was old. For being a man of incomparable sagacity, he was the first that published institutions of oratory; and by reason of his profound learning, he was surnamed Nestor. Caecilius, in a tract which he wrote of him, supposes him to have been Thucydides’s pupil, from what Antiphon delivered in praise of him. He is most accurate in his orations, in invention subtle; and he would frequently baffle his adversary at unawares, by a covert sort of pleading; in troublesome and intricate matters he was very judicious and sharp; and as he was a great admirer of ornamental speaking, he would always adapt his orations to both law and reason.
