Antĭphon
(
Ἀντιφῶν). The earliest of the ten great Attic orators,
born B.C. 480 in Attica, son of the sophist Sophilus, to whom he owed his training. He was the
founder of political eloquence as an art, which he taught with great applause in his own
school of rhetoric; and he was the first who wrote out speeches for others to deliver in
court, though he afterwards published them under his own name. He also played an active part
in the politics of his time as a leading member of the oligarchical party, and the real author
of the death-blow which was dealt to democracy in B.C. 411 by the establishment of the Council
of Four Hundred. He then went as ambassador to Sparta, to purchase peace at any price in the
interest of the oligarchy. On the fall of the Four Hundred he was accused of high treason,
and, in spite of a masterly defence —the first speech he had ever made in
public— was condemned to death B.C. 411. Of the sixty orations attributed to him,
only fifteen are preserved—all on trials for murder; but only three of them are
about real cases. The rest (named
tetralogies because every four are
the first and second speeches of both plaintiff and defendant on the same subject) are mere
exercises. Antiphon's speeches exhibit the art of oratory in its rudimentary stage as regards
both substance and form. The best edition is that of Blass
(Leipzig, 1881).