A Biographical Source on Phaiax and Alkibiades?

Extract

No recent scholar has ever seriously maintained the genuineness of [Andokides] Oration IV, Against Alkibiades. Against it, one need cite no more than Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit (1868), pp. 325–31; Jebb, Attic Orators (1876), vol. i, pp. 133–9; an(i now more recently Raubitschek's learned and interesting article in T.A.P.A., vol. lxxix (1948), pp. 191–210. The speech is quite ‘out of character’ for Andokides, who was certainly far too young ever to have been in danger of ostrakism as an alternative victim to Nikias or Alkibiades; and there is no reasonable doubt that its ‘dramatic date’ is early in 415, and its ostensible speaker Phaiax, the clever young orator of Aristophanes' Knights (1377 ff.), ambassador to Sicily in 422 (Thk. 5. 4–5; cf. our speech § 42, which adds Macedonia and Epeiros) and butt of Eupolis on divers occasions (Plut. Alk. 13, Athenaios 3. 106b). These conclusions, however, leave open certain other material questions, especially that of the real date of the composition, on which in turn depends the question how far it can be legitimately used as an historical or biographical source.