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And Caecilius, in the treatise he compiled about him, conjectures from the terms in which Antiphon is praised in the work of the historian Thucydides that he was the latter’s teacher. Cf. Thucydides, viii. 68 ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναίων τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτόν ἀρετῇ τε οὐδενὸς δεύτερος καὶ κπάτιστος ἐνθυμηθῆναι γενόμενος καὶ ἃ γνοίη εἰπεῖν, a man inferior to none of the Athenians of his own day in force of character, and one who had proved himself most able both to formulate a plan and to set forth his conclusions in speech (Smith’s translation, L.C.L.). In his speeches he is accurate and persuasive, clever in invention, ingenious in handling perplexing cases; he attacks unexpectedly, and he addresses his arguments to both the laws and the emotions, aiming especially at propriety. He was born at the time of the Persian wars and of the sophist Gorgias, who was somewhat older than he; and his life extended until the destruction of the democracy by the Four Hundred,In 411 b.c. when for some four months an oligarchy ruled Athens. in causing which he seems himself to have had a part, at one time by being trierarchThe duty of fitting out ships for the navy devolved upon wealthy citizens, who were then called trierarchs. of two ships, at another by being generalAntiphon was a common name at Athens in the fifth century. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, 2nd ed. i. pp. 93 ff., distinguishes, in addition to the orator: (1) a patriotic and worthy citizen (Xenophon, Hell. ii. 3. 40) in defence of whose daughter Lysias wrote a speech, and to whom the military activities belong which are here ascribed to the orator; (2) the tragic poet who was put to death by Dionysius of Syracuse (Aristotle, Rhet. ii. 6. p. 1385 a 9); (3) Antiphon the sophist (Xenophon, Mem. i. 6. 5; Diog. Laert. ii. 5. 25), who is probably the one who practised mental healing at Corinth; (4) the son of Pyrilampus (Plato, Parmenides, 127 a); (5) the son of Lysonides (Moralia, 833 a); and (6) an Antiphon derided by Aristophanes (Wasps, 1270), as a starveling. The Pseudo-Plutarch has evidently fused several of these personalities with that of the orator. and gaining many victories in battle and winning important alliances for the Four Hundred, by arming the men of military age, by manning sixty triremes, and by being on every occasion their envoy to Lacedaemon at the time when Eëtioneia had been fortified.Eëtioneia, the mole which formed the northern side of the great Harbour of Peiraeus, was fortified by the Four Hundred in order to command the entrance. And after the overthrow of the Four Hundred he was indicted along with Archeptolemus, one of the Four Hundred, was found guilty, subjected to the punishments prescribed for traitors, thrown out unburied, and inscribed along with his descendants in the list of the disfranchised. But some tell us that he was put to death by the Thirty,In 404 b.c., when Athens was occupied by the Lacedaemonians, a body of Thirty men was appointed to revise the constitution. They seized all power and ruled ruthlessly until overthrown in May 403 b.c. as Lysias says in his speech in defence of Antiphon’s daughter; for he had a daughter whom Callaeschrus claimed in marriage by legal process. And that he was put to death by the Thirty is told also by Theopompus in the fifteenth book of his Philippics Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. i. p. 300.; but that must have been another Antiphon, the son of Lysidonides, whom Cratinus also, in his play The Flask, mentions as a rascal; for how could a man who had died previously and had been put to death by the Four Hundred be living again in the time of the Thirty? But there is also another story of his death: that he sailed as envoy to Syracuse when the tyranny of Dionysius the First was at its height, and at a convivial gathering the question arose what bronze was the best; then when most of the guests disagreed, he said that bronze was the best from which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton were made; and when Dionysius heard this, suspecting that the remark was intended to encourage an attack upon himself, he ordered that Antiphon be put to death. But others say that he was angry because Antiphon made fun of his tragedies.
