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This orator is reported to have written sixty orations; but Caecilius supposes twenty-five of them to be spurious and none of his. Plato, in his comedy called Pisander, traduces him as a covetous man. He is reported to have composed some of his tragedies alone, and others with Dionysius the tyrant. While he was poetically inclined, he invented an art of curing the distemper of the mind, as physicians are wont to provide cure of bodily diseases. And having at Corinth built him a little house, in or near the market, he set a postscript over the gate, to this effect: that he had a way to cure the distemper of men’s minds by words; and let him but know the cause of their malady, he would immediately prescribe the remedy, to their comfort. But after some time, thinking that art not worth his while, he betook himself to the study and teaching of oratory. There are some who ascribe the book of Glaucus of Rhegium concerning Poets to him as author. His orations concerning Herodes, against Erasistratus concerning Peacocks,Concerning Ideas, according to the MSS. (G.) are very much commended, and also that which, when he was accused, he penned for himself against a public indictment, and that against Demosthenes the general for moving an illegal measure. He likewise had another against Hippocrates the general; who did not appear on the day appointed for his trial, and was condemned in his absence.
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Caecilius has recorded the decree of the senate for the judicial trial of Antiphon, passed in the yearTheopompus was Archon in B.C. 411. (G.) in which Theopompus was chief magistrate of Athens, the same in which the Four Hundred were overthrown,—in these words:
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Enacted by the senate on the twenty-first day of the prytany. Demonicus of Alopece was clerk; Philostratus of Pallene was president.
