Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T21:06:43.869Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Antiphon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

J. S. Morrison
J. S. Morrison
Affiliation:
Churchill College, Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Galen, in the second century A.D., refers to Antiphon three times in his commentary on Hippocrates. On the first occasion, Gloss. Hippocr. Prooem. V, 706 Bas., XIX, 66, 77 K., he says (after mentioning Aristophanes' Daitaleis): . A conversation follows between a son who has just acquired a city education and his father. The son keeps using new words, which are identified by the father each time as borrowed from Lysistratus, ‘the rhetores’, Alcibiades, and Thrasymachus. On the second occasion, in Hippocr. de offic. XVIII, B., 656 K., Galen cites two fragments from the first book of Antiphon's Truth (). And on the third occasion, in Hippocr. epid. XVII, A., 681 K., he refers to a passage in the second book of the same work, which explains how hail is formed in the atmosphere.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 7 , 1961 , pp. 49 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1961

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 49 note 1 Not here published. It will appear shortly in Phronesis VII (1).

page 49 note 2 Studi sul Pensiero Antico (Naples, 1938), p. 79Google Scholar.

page 49 note 3 See p. 51. Dover, K. J. (‘The Chronology of A.'s Speeches’, C.Q. I–II (1950), 59)Google Scholar raises the question whether Antiphon of Rhamnus did teach. He says: ‘Caecilius merely inferred (τεκμαίρεται [Plut.] Vit. Ant. 7) that Thucydides was his pupil. Plato, Menex. 236Google Scholar A I take to be a Socratic joke: no doubt when a well-to-do young man defended himself with unexpected ability in the courts people shook their heads and said “He must have learnt it from Antiphon”. That is not to say that Antiphon may not have dabbled in theoretical rhetoric years before he wrote real speeches.’ D.'s conclusion with regard to the tetralogies is: ‘Given the existence of eisphorai in the Pentecontaetia, all the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the Tetralogies were written by Antiphon, in imitation of ultimately Ionic models at a stage in his career earlier than his writing for real litigants.’ It seems rather a prevarication to deny the title of teacher to a man who was a possible author of the tetralogies and was the subject of Plato's remark. Plutarch, , de glor. Ath. 8Google Scholar, speaks of . Whether or not he taught Thucydides is another matter (see below, pp. 53, 56.)

page 50 note 1 The distinction is maintained by Bignone, op. cit.; Schmid, , Gesch. der Griech. Lit. III, I, i (1940), 98 f.Google Scholar; Untersteiner, The Sophists (1948), tr. Freeman, K. (1954), pp. 228–71Google Scholar and all modern works of reference. The latest work on Antiphon by Androutsopoulos and Loukas (Athens, 1956) contains nothing new (cf. Chantraine, P., Rev. de Phil. XXXII (1958), 328Google Scholar). Nestle, W., Vom Mythos zum Logos (1940), ascribes (pp. 391 ff.)Google Scholar the Tetralogies to the author of the Truth, and the book About Concord to the Rhamnusian orator. von der Mühll, P., Museum Helveticum, V (1948), 1 f.Google Scholar, regards the orator and the Rhamnusian as the only notable Antiphon and thinks that Xenophon referred to him in the Memorabilia, that the books About Concord and Truth became attributed to him by attraction of the name, and that the Tetralogies are by a different author than the speeches. The distinction has been questioned by Joel, , Der echte und der xen. Sokr. II, 638 ff.Google Scholar; Croiset, , Rev. des étud. gr. (1917), pp. 1 ff.Google Scholar; Aly, , Phil. Suppl. XXI, 3 (1929), 105 ff.Google Scholar; Hommel, , Antiphon Sophist und Rhetor: Geistige Arbeit (5 July 1941)Google Scholar.

page 50 note 2 Dover, op. cit. p. 60, ‘Can any light be thrown on the “mystery” of the two Antiphons? I doubt it, because of the fragmentary nature of the Sophist's works, their fundamental difference of genre from the speeches, and the difficulty of dating them. For these reasons the linguistic criteria offered by Bignone, (Studi, pp. 175 ff.)Google Scholar and Luria, (Riv. Fil. LIV (1926), 218 ff.)Google Scholar are not cogent.’ I agree that linguistic criteria are not cogent. Nor do I think that Bignone's other main thesis, that the sophist was a democrat and therefore different from the Rhamnusian, can be sustained when we know so little of the theme of the works attributed to ‘the sophist’. The most profitable line of approach seems to me to try to discover why, and when, the distinction was made, and to see if the reasons were good. There is no ‘mystery’.

page 51 note 1 See below, pp. 53 and 56.

page 51 note 2 See below, p. 58.

page 51 note 3 According to fifth- and fourth-century practice teachers of rhetoric like Gorgias and Thrasymachus were just as much sophistai as Protagoras and Prodicus. Cf. Isocrates, Against the Sophists, which first criticizes those who profess to teach the science of virtue and happiness and then the teachers of πολιτικοι λόγοι, a term which includes, as Norlin observes, the whole field of deliberative oratory. Also Alcidamas, Concerning Sophists, which is about speech-writers and teachers of rhetoric. Cf. Bignone, op. cit. p. 162, n. 3 for this point. Croiset (op. cit.) thought that Xenophon used the term σοϕιστής to distinguish his Antiphon from the tragic poet.

page 52 note 1 See above, p. 49, n. 1.

page 52 note 2 The authenticity of the tetralogies is denied by Dittenberger, (Hermes (1896, 1897), cf. (1905), pp. 450–70)Google Scholar, Gernet (Budé ed., pp. 6 ff.) and Maidment (Loeb ed. p. 46), who does not, however, find the evidence entirely conclusive. Solmsen, (Antiphonstudien (1931))Google Scholar, Thiel, (A.'s Erste Tetralogie (1932))Google Scholar, Zuntz, G. (Class. et Mediev. II (1939)Google Scholar and Mus. Helv. (1949), pp. 100 ff.)Google Scholar regard them as genuine and an early work. Zuntz thinks they could not have been written after 444. Dover (op. cit.) points out that their authenticity depends on the question of the existence of eisphorai in the Pentecontaetia, but is otherwise prepared to accept them. H. Richards' cautious treatment of the problem (C.R. XX (1906), 148 ff.Google Scholar) is perhaps the most valuable. He notices a stylistic affinity between the forensic speeches and, more marked, the tetralogies on the one hand, and Thucydides on the other.

page 52 note 3 Aristophanes, , Wasps, 1270 and 1301Google Scholar; Phot. cod. 259; Lysias, XII, 67.

page 53 note 1 See Bonner, S. F., Literary Treatises of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1939), p. 9Google Scholar, n. 4.

page 53 note 2 See Richards, (C.R. XX (1906), 148 ff.)Google Scholar, p. 52 n. 2 above. Schuller, S. (Rev. Belge de Phil. XXXIV (1956), 971–84)CrossRefGoogle Scholar draws attention to the influence of A. on Thucydides in the use of the words αἰτία and πρόϕασις.

page 54 note 1 Hermogenes, , περὶ ἰδεῶν, IIGoogle Scholar; Spengel, , Rh. Gr. II, 414Google Scholar. Also ap. Blass, , Antiphon, Bibl. Teubn. pp. xlii–xlivGoogle Scholar.

page 55 note 1 See R.E. s.v. ‘Mantike’ (Hopfner, 1930)Google Scholar.

page 55 note 2 Cicero, , De div. I, 20, 39Google Scholar (DK, B, 81); ibid. II, 70, 44 (DK, B, 80); Seneca, , Controv. II, 1, 33Google Scholar (DK, B, 81); Lucian, V. Hist. II, 33Google Scholar (DK, A, 7); Melampus, , περὶ παλμῶν, 18, 19Google Scholar (DK, B, 81 a); Artemidorus, I, 14, p. 109, 10 H. (DK, B, 78); Tertullian, , De anima, 46Google Scholar (377, 3 Wiss.); the Suda, s.v. Ἀντιϕῶν (DK, A, 1).

page 55 note 3 .

page 55 note 4 Op. cit. p. 50, n. 1.

page 56 note 1 See above, p. 53; cf. also p. 49, n. 3.

page 56 note 2 E.g. Aristophanes, , Wasps, 52Google Scholar; Frogs, 1340; Euripides, , Hec. 68Google Scholar.

page 57 note 1 It appears also in Photius cod. 259 (486 a 16 Bekker).

page 57 note 2 Cf. A.'s appearance in Plato's Peisander (certainly, in view of the title, the Rhamnusian).

page 57 note 3 Philostratus 499; Diodorus ap. Alex., Clem.Strom. I, 315Google Scholar. And Plato Comicus laughed at his ϕιλαργυρία.

page 58 note 1 Cf. Plut., Nic. VI, 1Google Scholar.