ANTIPHON
§ 1
Antiphon is said to have been almost contemporary with Gorgias, but a
little younger.[43] He was born about 480 B.C. He took no part in public
life, perhaps disdaining to serve the democracy owing to his strong
aristocratic prejudices. He wrote many speeches for others, but himself
never spoke in the assembly and very rarely in the public courts. Most of
his speeches were written for private individuals, but we have a record
on one ‘_about the tribute of Samothrace_,’ apparently composed on behalf
of that community when appealing against their assessment. Having lived
in comparative obscurity all his life, he stepped suddenly into brilliant
light in 411 B.C., the year of the revolution of the Four Hundred.
According to Thucydides his was the brain which had planned all the
details of this anti-democratic conspiracy. The historian pays a striking
tribute to his ability as an organiser:
‘It was Pisander who proposed this motion and in general took
the most active steps for the subversion of the democracy; but
the one who contrived the whole plot and the details of its
working and who had given his attention to it longest was
Antiphon, a man who must be placed in the first rank for his
character, his ingenuity, and his powers of expression. He never
put himself forward in the assembly, nor appeared, from choice,
at any trial in the courts, but lay under the people’s suspicion
owing to a reputation for cleverness. He was, however, more
capable than any other man of giving assistance to anybody who
consulted him with regard to a case either in the courts or the
assembly. Eventually, when the Four Hundred suffered reverse and
were being harshly treated by the democracy, he was himself
brought to trial, for participation in the revolution, and is
known to have made the finest defence ever on record as having
been delivered by a man on trial for his life.’[44]
During the short rule of the Four Hundred he seems to have been one
of the leaders of the extreme party, as opposed to the followers of
Theramenes, who advocated measures of conciliation. He went, with
Phrynichus and eight other envoys, to negotiate peace with Sparta in
the hope of thus securing the oligarchical government. Shortly after
the failure of this embassy came the murder of Phrynichus and the fall
of the Four Hundred, and the democracy was ready for revenge. Most of
the ringleaders fled to Deceleia; Antiphon and Archeptolemus remained,
were prosecuted for treason to the people, condemned and executed.
Their property was confiscated, their houses razed to the ground, their
descendants disfranchised for all time, and their bodies refused burial
in the soil of Athens or any of her allies.
On the occasion of his trial the orator, who had spent the best years
of his life in pleading by the lips of others in causes which did not
interest him, justified his renown and far surpassed all expectation,
delivering what was, in Thucydides’ opinion, the finest speech of its
kind ever heard up to that time. Aristotle preserves an anecdote telling
how the poet Agathon congratulated the condemned man on his brilliant
effort, and Antiphon replied that ‘he would rather have satisfied one
man of taste than any number of common people’—οἱ τυγχάνοντες, a fine
aristocratic term for great Athenian people.[45]
§ 2
At the time when Antiphon composed his speeches, Attic prose had not
settled down into any fixed forms. The first of the orators was therefore
an explorer in language; he was not hampered by traditions, and this
freedom was an advantage; but on the other hand, the insufficiency of
models threw him back entirely on his own resources.
Of his predecessors in prose-writing, the early historians were of
no account as stylists. Herodotus wrote in a foreign dialect and a
discursive colloquial manner which was unsuited to the needs of oratory;
Gorgias, indeed, used the Attic dialect, but had hindered the growth
of prose by a too copious use of florid poetical expression. Antiphon,
therefore, had little to guide him, and we should expect to find in his
work the imperfections which are natural in the experimental stage of any
art.
So few of his works remain that we cannot trace any development in his
style; it is only possible to guess at certain influences which may have
helped to form it.
He must have been familiar with the methods of the best speakers in
the assembly and the law-courts of the Periclean age; without great
experience of procedure in both he could not have hoped for any success
as a speech-writer. He must have been versed in the theories of the
great Sophists, such as Protagoras and, more particularly, Gorgias; and
the model discourses which they and others composed for their pupils’
instruction were, no doubt, accessible to him. The general influence of
Sophistry is, however, to be traced more in the nature of his arguments
than in his style.[46]
§ 3
As regards vocabulary, we are struck at once by the fact that Antiphon
uses many words which, apart from their occurrence in these speeches,
would be classed as rare or poetical; words, that is, which a maturer
prose-style was inclined to reject. This was partly the result of
circumstances; as has been noted, there was no canon of style and
vocabulary, and the influence of Gorgias had been rather to confuse
than to distinguish the dictions of prose and poetry, while the great
importance attached to poetry in the sophistical education of the time
increased the difficulties for any experimental writer who was unwilling
to resort to the colloquial language. In many cases, however, we may
give Antiphon credit for intention in the deliberate use of poetical
words: the ‘austere’ style ‘is wont to expand itself,’ says Dionysius,
‘by means of big spacious words’;[47] and a store of such words is to be
found in the poets, notably Aeschylus.[48]
Antiphon is not singular among prose writers in introducing poetical
words; Plato, the greatest master of Attic prose, is in some cases more
poetical than the poets themselves, though his genius is sufficient to
obviate any sense of harshness or incongruity. But to an orator such
harshness might on occasion be a positive advantage for producing a
particular effect; an unusual word must, at the worst, attract attention;
at the best it lends dignity to an otherwise pedestrian sentence.
Dionysius classed Antiphon and Aeschylus together as masters of the
‘austere’ style, and some of the orator’s words and phrases, quite apart
from his treatment of his subjects, have a certain touch of Aeschylean
majesty.
Besides poetical words—words which may, as we see, have been used
intentionally, in preference to their ordinary equivalents in everyday
speech—he employs, for the same reasons, a certain number of unusual
words and forms not necessarily poetical. Every conscious stylist makes
experiments: some of his innovations may become current coin; others may
never pass into general circulation, but remain unused until, perhaps,
after many generations an archæologist discovers and uses the hoard.[49]
A few familiar words occur in unusual forms which are generally regarded
as un-Attic; unless they are to be removed by emendation, we must suppose
that they were used intentionally to give an archaic tone.[50]
Another noticeable characteristic of Antiphon’s language is the frequent
employment of circumlocutions both for verbs and nouns; a neuter
participle or adjective in combination with the definite article does
duty as a substantive, while a verbal noun joined to an auxiliary takes
the place of a verb. Thus, by an artifice which becomes very common in
later writers, ‘the beautiful’ is used as a synonym for the abstract
noun ‘beauty,’ and to ‘be judges of the truth’ is substituted for ‘judge
the truth.’ These artificialities are often to be noticed in Thucydides,
especially in the speeches, and are probably derived from Gorgias, who
seems to have instituted the fashion.[51]
§ 4
Aristotle and subsequent critics distinguish, in prose, the running style
(εἰρομένη λέξις) and the periodic (περιοδική). The characteristic of the
former is that a sentence consists of a succession of clauses loosely
strung together (εἴρω), like a row of beads; generally by τε, δέ and
other copulae; the sentence begins and ends with no definite plan, and
may be of any length. In the word _period_ (circuit) the metaphor is
rather that of a hoop; the sentence does not stretch out indefinitely in
a straight line, but after a certain time bends back on itself so that
the end is joined to the beginning. It must, according to Aristotle,[52]
be of limited length, not longer than can be taken in at a glance or
uttered in one breath, and have a definitely marked beginning and end.[53]
Aristotle finds the loose, running style tedious, because it has no
artistic limit of length, and never gets to an end until it has finished
what it has to say. To us it seems to have this slight advantage, that
it can always stop when it has said what it means, and has no temptation
to plunge itself into antithesis or lose its way at the cross-roads
of chiasmus before it arrives at its destination; for though, in the
periodic style, the end of the sense should ideally coincide with the
end of the period, there are in practice many instances where the sense
is fully expressed and the sentence might end before the ‘circuit’ is
artistically complete.
The baldest examples of the ‘strung together’ style must be sought in the
fragments of the early historians; but Herodotus is sufficiently near to
them to provide us with an object-lesson.
Take, for instance, the following:
‘When Ardys had reigned forty-nine years, Sadyattes his son
succeeded him, and he reigned twelve years, and Alyattes
succeeded Sadyattes. And he made war on Cyaxares, the
descendant of Deioces, and the Medes, and drove the Cimmerians
out of Asia and took Smyrna, a colony of Colophon, and attacked
Clazomenae. Here he had not the success he desired, but met
with grave disaster. And during his reign he did other
noteworthy deeds, as follows. He fought with the Milesians ...’
etc., etc.[54]
Yet even Herodotus, the most obvious exponent of the loose style, shows
a tendency towards the greater compression of periodic writing; this
tendency is at times strongly marked, _e.g._ in the speeches of the
Persian nobles in debate.[55] Here there is a continual movement towards
the balance of clauses; it is very far from the harmonious structure of
Isocrates, and is perhaps unconscious, but the elements of the periodic
style are there.
The particular faculty of this latter style is that it can be
more emphatic and precise than the other. It must be concentrated
(κατεστραμμένη)[56] if the sentence is to be of moderate length; it
tries, as Dionysius says, ‘to pack the thoughts close together, and bring
them out compactly.’[57]
These qualities, concentration of thought and preciseness of expression,
are essential for a pleader in the courts, and so it was not unnatural
that the development of the periodic style should coincide at Athens with
the rise of forensic oratory. Antiphon, the first practical pleader on
scientific lines, is also the earliest of extant writers known to have
been a careful student of periodic expression.
It must not be supposed that all his work consisted of periods carefully
balanced: on the one hand, perfection could not be attained at the
first onset; many of the sentences are crude; in some cases there is a
weakness of emphasis due to imperfect mastery of the form; on the other
hand, there are cases where the style is freer and more analogous to
the simple fluency of the εἰρομένη λέξις. The plain fact is that the
method of Herodotus is the most appropriate for telling a straightforward
narrative from one point of view only; while the periodic style comes
spontaneously into being for purposes of criticism, or where we contrast
what is with what might have been; or of debate, where we put up
alternatives side by side with the object of choosing between them.
The first object of history, to the mind of Herodotus, is to tell a
story; and Herodotus mostly keeps this end in view. Thucydides in some
parts of his narrative does the same, but whereas he has a greater
tendency to consider each event not by itself but in relation to other
circumstances, such as the motives for the action, its effects and
influences, he is often periodic even in narrative. He is still more so
in speeches. The object of a deliberative speech is not usually to tell
a plain story but to produce a highly-coloured one; it mentions facts
chiefly with the object of criticizing them and drawing an inference or a
moral.
If this is true of the speeches in Thucydides, it must be still more
applicable to those of a forensic orator. In Antiphon we find short
passages in the simple narrative style—for instance, in the statement
of facts in the _Herodes_ case; but a short section of this nature is
followed by criticism and argument expressed in the more artificial
period. This is inevitable; there is no time to spend on long narratives.
Closely connected with the desire for a periodic style is the tendency
to frequent use of verbal antithesis, an artistic figure which provides
a happy means of completing the period and the sense. It is useful
because the second part of the antithesis supplies the reader or hearer
with something which he is already expecting. It is the application in
practice of a familiar psychological law of association by contrary
ideas. Such contrast is emphasized in Greek by the common use of the
particles μέν and δέ, and is of unnecessarily frequent occurrence in
Athenian writers. All readers of Thucydides will remember that author’s
craving for the contrast between ‘word and deed.’ In judicial rhetoric
this kind of opposition must inevitably occur very often. From the nature
of things each speaker will want to insist on his own honesty and the
dishonesty of his opponents; the truth which he is telling as opposed to
their lies, and to contrast the appearances, which seem so black against
him, with the transparent whiteness of his character as revealed by a
true account of the case. But Antiphon, like the speakers in Thucydides,
carries this use of antithesis too far, for a sentence which contains too
many contrasted ideas is difficult to follow, and so loses force.
A fair example may be taken from the third speech of the second tetralogy:
‘I, who have done nothing wrong, but have suffered grievously
and cruelly already, and now suffer still more cruelly not
from the words but the acts of my adversary, throw myself
upon your mercy, Gentlemen—you who are avengers of impiety
but discriminators of piety—and implore you, in view of plain
facts, not to be over-persuaded by a malicious precision of
speech, and so consider the true explanation of the deed to be
false; for his statement has been made with more plausibility
than truth; mine will be made without guile, though at the same
time without force.’
This outburst is part of a sentence in which the prosecutor expresses his
indignation that the opponent whom he has accused of murder has had the
audacity to defend himself at some length.
One more example—from the speech on the charge of poisoning—is almost
ridiculous.
‘Those whose duty it was to play the part of avengers of the
dead and my helpers, have played the part of murderers of the
dead, and established themselves as my adversaries.’
§ 5
All speakers must consider the sound of their sentences as well as
their grammatical structure, and among all careful writers we find that
attention is paid to the balance of clauses. Some orators go further than
this; they emphasize contrasts or parallels by the repetition of similar
sounds and even show a preference for certain rhythms, it being a maxim
of late rhetoricians that prose, though not strictly metrical in the same
way as verse, should possess a characteristic rhythm of its own.
Some authors go so far as to change the natural order of words for
the purpose of escaping hiatus of open vowels, which are necessarily
awkward to pronounce in rapid speech. This is familiar from the pages of
Demosthenes, and what the later writers did systematically, Antiphon, and
even Thucydides, seem to have done at times instinctively.
As regards the balance of clauses, a good example may be found in the
opening of the _Herodes_ speech:
τοῦ μὲν πεπείραμαι πέρα τοῦ προσήκοντος,
του δ’ ἐνδεής εἰμι μᾶλλον τοῦ συμφέροντος,
where the correspondence of the two clauses in equal numbers of syllables
is noticeable. The next sentence shows the same sort of correspondence,
though not quite so precise; but here the structure is more elaborate,
since we have two clauses, each of two parts, contrasted both in whole
and part:
A. οὗ μὲν γάρ μ’ ἔδει κακοπαθεῖν τῷ σώματι μετὰ τῆς αἰτίας τῆς οὐ
προσηκούσης,
α. ἐνταυθοῖ οὐδέν μ’ ὠφέλησεν ἡ ἐμπειρία,
B. οὗ δέ με δεῖ σωθῆναι μετὰ τῆς ἀληθείας εἰπόντα τὰ γενόμενα,
β. ἐν τούτῳ με βλάπτει ἡ τοῦ λέγειν ἀδυναμία.
Though there is no rhythmical correspondence here, and the syllabic
lengths only correspond roughly, the ‘antistrophic’ structure is obvious.
Gorgias, if we may condemn him on the evidence of a single short
fragment, seems to have affected rhyme—at any rate his collocation of
γνώμην and ῥώμην cannot have been accidental—and the similar sound of the
endings of the two clauses in the first passage quoted above proves that
Antiphon at any rate took no pains to avoid such natural assonance. In
an inflexional language, where there is always a strong probability that
a rhyme will occur wherever we have to use an adjective agreeing with a
noun, or two verbs in the same tense and person, some ingenuity has to
be employed at times to avoid a rhyme, and Antiphon here, at any rate,
did not choose to avoid it. The use of rhyme in verse seems to have been
offensive to the Greek ear;[58] perhaps for that very reason it may have
been at times desirable in prose, its harshness producing the same kind
of effect which Antiphon elsewhere attains by the use of uncommon words.
Hiatus is of fairly common occurrence in Antiphon, and I cannot point
to any certain instance of an attempt to avoid it by a change from the
natural order of words.
Antiphon draws little from common speech; perhaps his dignity prevented
him from enforcing a point by the use of those γνῶμαι—proverbial
maxims—which Aristotle recommends; and he seldom has recourse to
colloquialisms. We are inclined, however, to put in this class such a
phrase as περιέπεσεν οἷς οὐκ ἤθελεν—‘he got what he didn’t want’—used
of an unfortunate who has been accidentally killed through his own
negligence.
Metaphors are rare, but telling when they do occur, as δίκη
κυβερνήσειε—‘May justice steer my course’; ζῶντες κατορωρύγμεθα—‘I am
buried in a living tomb,’ used by a man who lost his only son; or,
again, the appeal of the prisoner to the jury not to condemn him to
death—ἀνίατος γὰρ ἡ μετάνοια τῶν τοιούτων ἐστίν—‘Repentance for such a
deed can never cure it.’
* * * * *
Some exaggeration of language is permitted to an orator. The defendant in
the first tetralogy thus appeals for pity—‘An old man, an exile and an
outcast, I shall beg my bread in a foreign land.’
The so-called ‘figures of thought’ (σχήματα διανοίας) such as irony and
rhetorical questions, so frequent in Demosthenes, are scarcely used
by Antiphon. There is no instance either of the hypocritical reticence
(παράλειψις), also common in later orators, which by a pretence of
passing over certain matters in silence hints at more than it could prove.
Greek oratory was much bound by conventions from which even the greatest
speakers could not altogether escape. To some extent this may be
attributed to the evil influence of the teachers of rhetoric, but by far
the greater part of the blame must rest upon the Athenian audiences.
The dicasts, with a curious inconsistency, seem to have demanded a
finished style of speaking, and yet to have been suspicious of any
speaker who displayed too much cleverness. It was, in fact, the
possession of this quality which made Antiphon himself unpopular.[59]
A pleader, therefore, who felt himself in danger of incurring such
suspicion, must apologize to his audience in advance, stating that any
strength which his case might seem to possess was due to its own inherent
justice, not to his own powers of presenting it. He must compliment the
jury on their well-known impartiality, and express a deep respect for
the sanctity of the laws. The early rhetoricians made collections of
such ‘topics’ or ‘commonplaces,’ and instructed their pupils how to use
them. The process became merely mechanical; any speaker could obtain from
the rhetorical handbooks specimens of sentences dealing with all such
requirements, but only a man of rare genius could, by originality of
treatment, make them sound at all convincing. Aristotle at a later date
made a practically exhaustive collection of such topics.[60]
Antiphon, in his Tetralogies, showed by example how some of these
commonplaces might be employed. In his real speeches he uses them freely,
and with so little care that he repeats his own actual words even within
the limits of the few extant speeches.[61]
In the introduction of these devices, however, he shows some skill. The
speech on the murder of Herodes is quite subtle in places. Compliments
are paid to the jury, but the flattery is not too open. It is sometimes
achieved rather by suggestion than by statement. ‘Not that I wished to
avoid a trial by your democracy,’ says the defendant; and again, ‘Of
course I could trust you quite without considering the oath you have
taken’; or once more, in parenthesis, ‘On the supposition that I had no
objection to quitting this land for ever, I might have left the country.’
Here, and in other cases, there is little more than a hint which an
intelligent juror may grasp.
The most prominent of all the topics used by Antiphon is the appeal to
the divine law by which guile meets with punishment; the murdered man,
if unavenged by human justice, will find divine champions who will not
only bring the homicide to book, but will punish the guilty city which
has become polluted by harbouring him. So much stress is laid upon
this conception of divine justice that some writers have believed that
Antiphon held firm religious views which he thus expressed. This opinion
may reasonably be held, but it must not be pressed. We know from external
sources that Antiphon was not in sympathy with the existing government,
yet the speakers of his orations express or imply admiration for the
democracy; the speech-writer, in fact, wrote what he thought would be
acceptable to the judges rather than what he himself believed. Arguing,
in Antiphon’s own way, from probabilities, we may say it is more likely
that a highly educated contemporary of Anaxagoras and Pericles should in
private life profess a moderate scepticism than an unquestioning belief
in the sort of curse that destroyed the house of Atreus, even though
Antiphon may be Aeschylean in style.
The argument of the defendant in the _Herodes_, ‘Those who have sailed
with me have made excellent voyages, and sacrifices at which I have
assisted have been most favourably performed, and this is a strong
argument for my innocence,’ does not appeal to us, who do not believe
in the accidental blood-guiltiness of the community which unknowingly
harbours a guilty individual. It may or may not have had some weight
with Antiphon himself, but it certainly would have some influence on the
common people of Athens, who believed that the whole city was polluted
by the sacrilege of the mutilation of the Hermae. The fact that it must
impress the jury was a good reason for inserting it, whether Antiphon had
any religious feeling or not.[62]
§ 6
It remains to consider Antiphon’s manner in the treatment of his
subjects.
His personal dignity is as remarkable in his manner as in the formalities
of style. As we turn back to him from Demosthenes or Aeschines, who
lowered the tone of forensic pleading to suit contemporary taste, we are
surprised to find that he hardly ever condescends to ridicule, never
to scurrilous invective. His judicial adversaries are not necessarily
persons of discreditable parentage, immoral character, and infamous
occupation. They may perhaps be liars, for one’s own statement of the
case must be assumed to contain the whole truth, and consequently the
other side must depend on falsehood; but even here the orator is prepared
to admit, with almost un-Attic generosity, that his adversaries have been
misled and are not acting up to their true character. Take the opening of
Tetralogy II. 3:
‘The behaviour of my adversary shows, better than any theory
could, that necessity constrains men to speak and act contrary
to their better nature.
Up to the present he has never spoken shamelessly or acted
desperately; but now his misfortunes have constrained him to
use language which, knowing him, I should never have expected
him to utter.’
Antiphon’s method of constructing his speeches is simple: a conventional
preface, of the kind which every rhetorician kept in stock,[63] is
followed by an introduction describing and criticizing the circumstances
under which the action has been brought.[64] The facts, or a selection of
facts of the case, are then narrated,[65] and are followed by arguments
and proofs.[66] The evidence of witnesses may be interspersed through
the narrative, taken point by point; or, if the narrative is short and
simple, all the testimony may be reserved for the end. A peroration,[67]
reviewing the situation and containing a final appeal to the court,
normally ends the speech.
The speeches in the Tetralogies, which are only blank forms composed
for practice or as specimens for study, contain only preface, argument,
and peroration; there being no actual facts to deal with, there is no
introduction or narrative.
It is a peculiar weakness of the extant speeches that they rely so much
more on arguments from general probability (εἰκότα) than on real pleading
on the basis of evidence.[68]
Thus the defendant in the _Herodes_ mentions quite casually that he never
left the ship on the night when the murder was committed on shore, but he
produces no evidence for the _alibi_ and treats it as of quite secondary
importance.[69] He insists more on the point that the slave who gave
evidence against him was probably induced to bear false witness by the
prosecutors. Another piece of evidence against him is the assertion that
he wrote a letter to Lycinus, stating that he had committed the murder.
‘Why,’ he asks, ‘should I have written a letter, when my messenger would
know all the facts?’
It may be, in this instance, that the defendant’s case was a very weak
one, and that he was obliged to rely on generalities: but the First
Tetralogy affords an interesting parallel. There the defendant, in his
_second_ speech, the last speech of the trial, affirms, what he has
apparently forgotten to mention before, that he never left his house on
the night of the murder.
The most serious artistic defect in the extant speeches is the lack of
that realism which the Greeks called ἦθος, characterization. The language
of the defendants in the _Herodes_ and the _Choreutes_ is very similar,
though the former is a young Lesbian and the latter a middle-aged
Athenian. Moreover, the young Lesbian apologizes for his inexperience and
lack of capacity for speaking, and does so in polished periods elaborated
with all the devices of rhetorical art—antithesis of words and ideas,
careful balance of the length of clauses, and judicious employment of
assonance.
A perusal of Antiphon’s introduction to the speech _de Caede Herodis_
will help, better than any detailed criticism, to an understanding of his
methods of composition. We must note the disproportionate length of this
introduction, to which the pleader evidently attaches more importance
than to the disproof of the charge itself.[70] A study of it leads us
to believe that the guilt or innocence of the party would have little
to do with the verdict if he had once succeeded in impressing the jury
favourably. He apologizes in artistic periods for his incapacity in
public speaking, and enlarges on the commonplace that truth has often
been stifled through lacking the power of expression.
He makes no appeal for impartiality, since he can trust the jury—another
brazen commonplace (§§ 1-7).
The procedure of his adversaries is as shameless as it is unjust (§§
8-9); it is even sacrilegious (§§ 10-12), so that they merit indignation,
while the defendant, who respects the laws of God and man as he loves
his country, deserves every indulgence (§§ 13-15). The prosecutors’
brutality can be explained by their distrust in the justice of their case
and the uprightness of the jury (§§ 16-17). Finally, they have had ample
time to work up their case, while the victim of their intrigues is called
upon at a moment’s notice to answer the most serious charges (§§ 18-19).
‘1. I could wish, Gentlemen, that I possessed a capacity
for speaking and an experience of the world on a scale
corresponding to the misfortune and sufferings that have
befallen me; as it is, my experience in the latter is as much
beyond my deserts as my deficiency in the former falls short of
my requirements.
‘2. When I had to suffer in my own person under an undeserved
charge, I had no experience to help me on; now, when my
salvation lies in a plain statement of the facts as they
occurred, I am thwarted by my incapacity in speaking.
‘3. In many instances men with no capacity in speaking have
been disbelieved because they only told the truth, and have
owed their ruin to the fact that they could not demonstrate the
truth; many, on the other hand, who possess the capacity for
speaking, have been believed on account of their lies, and owed
their salvation to the fact that they lied well. So one who has
not the necessary experience of procedure in the courts must
inevitably be at the mercy of the speeches of the prosecution;
he cannot rest secure upon a true statement of the facts of the
case.
‘4. Now, most parties in such causes as this make a request
for a fair hearing—implying a mistrust of themselves and a
conviction that you are not impartial. I shall make no such
request, for it is only reasonable that honest men should grant
a hearing to the defendant, even though he has not asked for
it, just as the prosecutor has been granted a hearing without
asking.
‘5. But my prayer is, firstly, that if my tongue leads me into
error, you will be merciful, and consider that my error is
due to inexperience rather than guilt; and secondly, that if
I should in any point express myself well, you will attribute
such expression not to any cleverness of mine but to the
inherent power of truth; for justice demands that a man guilty
in his actions should not win salvation by his speech, and,
equally, that one righteous in his actions should not for
his speech be brought to ruin; for an error in speech is the
tongue’s fault—an error in action is a fault of the heart.
‘6. A man who realizes that his personal safety is endangered
is bound to err sometimes; he has to think not only of the
defence he is making, but of its possible results; for the
issue of all matters yet undecided depends on chance rather
than on forethought.
‘7. Such considerations cannot fail to cause anxiety to one
whose life is in danger; indeed, I observe that people who have
a thorough experience of the courts fail to do justice to their
powers when in danger themselves, but are far more successful
in cases which involve no personal danger. Thus, Gentlemen, my
request is both lawful and righteous; it is as just for you to
grant as for me to prefer it; and I now proceed to answer in
detail the charges which have been brought against me.
‘8. First, I would draw attention to the illegality of the
methods by which I have been forced into this trial, not that I
wish to avoid judgment by this democratic court—for even if you
had taken no oath, and were bound by no law, I should be ready
to leave in your hands the decision about my life, confident
as I am that I have done no wrong in this matter, and that
your verdict will be a just one—but in order that my enemies’
violent and illegal action against me in this case may help you
to realize their conduct towards me on other occasions.
‘9. My first point is this: Contrary to all precedent at
Athens, though I am on trial for murder, I was indicted for
“criminal violence.” Now my enemies themselves have testified
that I neither belong to the class of “violent criminals,” nor
am subject to the law which covers such cases. It applies to
such offences as stealing and highway robbery, and they have
shown that no such charge can attach to me.
‘Thus their conduct in the matter of my summary arrest has made
it in the highest degree legal and just for you to acquit me.
‘10. They say, indeed, that the taking of life is in itself an
aggravated form of “criminal violence.” I admit that it is a
most serious kind, and so is sacrilege or treason; but you have
laws which deal with each of these charges specifically.
‘And, to begin with, they have brought me to trial in the
Agora, the very place which a defendant in a charge of murder
is ordinarily warned to avoid; secondly, they have proposed a
penalty of their own choosing, whereas the law ordains that the
man who has taken another’s life shall lose his own in return.
‘This they have done, not for my benefit, but for their own
convenience, and herein they have failed in that respect for
the dead which the law prescribes.
‘11. Again, as I imagine you all know, all the courts concerned
with murder trials sit in the open air, with this particular
object, that the jurors may not have to enter the same building
with those who have blood on their hands, and that the
prosecutor in a trial for murder may not find himself under the
same roof with him who committed the act.
‘But you, Sir, have acted contrary to all precedent in
transgressing this law; and not only this: It was incumbent
on you to take the most solemn and binding oath, to invoke
destruction upon yourself and your family and your house if you
failed in its conditions, namely, that you would not bring any
charges against me except such as referred to the murder and my
complicity in it.
‘Had this obligation been observed, however great crimes I had
committed I could not be found guilty except in view of the one
fact of blood-guiltiness, and on the other hand, however many
good deeds I had to my credit, these good deeds could not save
me.
‘12. All this regular procedure you have violated; you have
invented laws for your own use; you who prosecute me have
taken no oath; your witnesses who bear witness against me have
taken none, though they ought first to take the same oath as
yourself; they should lay their hands upon the sacrifice while
they are bearing witness against me.
‘Further, you ask the court to dispense with the oath; to give
credence to your witnesses and bring in a verdict of Guilty,
though you yourself have made them disinclined to credit you
by transgressing the established laws, and by imagining that
your own illegal conduct should in their consideration have
precedence over law itself.
‘13. You say, however, that if I had been set at liberty I
should not have remained here, but should have gone away and
disappeared—as if you had compelled me against my will to
enter the country. I answer that, on your supposition that I
should not have minded saying farewell to Athens, it was open
to me either not to appear in obedience to the summons, and
so incur judgment by default, or to go away after replying to
the opening speech of the prosecution; for this privilege is
open to all. But you, by legislating in your own interest,
are trying to withhold in my case alone this privilege which
belongs to all of Greek race.
‘14. Yet I think we must all agree that the laws which govern
such procedure are the best laws in the world, and most in
accordance with divine sanction. They have a double claim to
respect; they are the most ancient laws in this land, and they
are unchangeable as the offences with which they deal; and this
is the strongest indication that a law is well framed; for time
and experience teach mankind to recognize what is not well
done.
‘So you do not require to learn from the speeches of the
prosecution whether the laws were well framed or not, as he
implies; but you do require to learn by the aid of the laws
whether the speeches of the prosecution are urging a righteous
and lawful action, or the reverse—as I assert.
‘15. The laws, then, which relate to the charge of murder,
are excellently framed, inasmuch as no one has ever ventured
to disturb them; you alone have ventured to legislate anew,
and for the worse. You would set aside justice as you have
transgressed law in your attempt to bring me to ruin. But your
illegal procedure is in itself the strongest evidence in my
favour; for you knew well enough that nobody who had taken that
solemn oath would have borne witness against me.
‘16. Again, you did not rely on the facts sufficiently to
allow the question of facts to be settled indisputably by a
single trial; you reserved for yourself the right to dispute
the judgment, and reopen the case, implying a distrust in the
verdict of the present court. The result is that even if I am
acquitted I am no better off, since it is open to you to say
that I was acquitted on the charge of criminal violence but not
on the charge of murder; whereas, if you secure my condemnation
you will demand my death on the ground that I have been found
guilty of murder.
‘What can surpass the cruelty of such a device by which you,
if you can once convince the jury, have attained your object;
while I, if I escape your clutches once, find the same danger
awaiting me again?
‘17. Again, my imprisonment was a monstrous illegality. I
consented to produce three sureties as required by law, but
they contrived that I should not be allowed to do so. There
is no other instance on record of the imprisonment of a
non-Athenian who consented to produce sureties.
‘Yet the officers who have custody of criminals are subject to
this same law, so that this is another privilege common to all
men which was withheld from me alone.
‘18. Of course, it suited my accusers, firstly, that I should
be as unprepared as possible, through being unable to attend
to my own business in person, secondly, that I should suffer
personal ill-usage, and in consequence of this personal
ill-usage find my own friends more ready to bear false witness
in support of my accusers than true witness in my support. And
so they inflicted a life-long disgrace on me and my family.
‘19. Thus I have been brought to trial handicapped in many ways
in relation to your laws and to justice; but even with these
disadvantages I shall try to demonstrate my innocence.
‘But it is a hard task to refute at a moment’s notice a number
of deliberate falsehoods long-prepared; for it is impossible to
be forearmed against unexpected attacks.’
After this long preamble, the speaker at last discusses the accusation
(§§ 19 _sqq._), and to some extent deals satisfactorily with the
evidence—entirely circumstantial—which has been brought against him.
It has already been noticed that, though he casually leaves it to be
inferred that he could prove an _alibi_, he lays no stress on the
assertion, and is far more concerned with showing that it is ‘improbable’
that he should be a murderer. The final and, apparently, the most
important argument is drawn from the absence of divine signs which might
have pointed to the speaker’s guilt. He makes no attempt, like the
defendant in the First Tetralogy, to suggest other explanations of the
crime; many crimes, he says, have before now baffled investigation, and
he is only concerned with denying the charge against himself.
§ 7
In the _Life of Antiphon_, falsely ascribed to Plutarch,[71] we read
that sixty speeches were extant under the orator’s name, but of these
twenty-five were considered spurious by the critic Caecilius of
Calacte. We have now fifteen, viz. the three Tetralogies, or sets of
four speeches; the speeches on the Murder of Herodes, the Death of the
Choreutes, and the Charge of Poisoning. All of these deal with homicide,
the department in which Antiphon, presumably, showed especial skill.
Blass has collected besides the titles of twenty-three other speeches on
miscellaneous subjects.[72]
The Tetralogies, each consisting of four short speeches on the same
imaginary case—two for the prosecution, and two for the defence—have this
peculiar interest, that they stand on the border-line between theory
and practice. They differ from the exercises composed by other early
rhetoricians and from the declamations of the Roman Empire in that they
are not concerned with historical or mythological personages in possible
or imaginary positions, but treat cases which, although fictitious, are
of the kind which might arise in everyday life at Athens. Thus these
skeleton-speeches give a clear idea of the lines on which either side
might plead its case in an actual trial. The professional advocate must
be ready to plead on either side in any cause, and here we find Antiphon
composing speeches in turn suitable for both sides. As has been noted,
there is very little detail given. No narrative of facts occurs; the
actual circumstances presupposed can only be gathered from the arguments
employed; and the result is that the outlines of the speeches both in
accusation and defence are very clearly marked.
The argument of the First Tetralogy is as follows:—A certain citizen has
been murdered on his way home from a dinner party. His slave, who was
mortally wounded at the same time, deposed that one of the murderers was
a certain enemy of his master, against whom the latter was on the point
of bringing a serious law-suit. The case comes before the Areopagus.
α. The accuser argues that the deceased cannot have been murdered by
robbers, since he was not plundered; nor in a drunken brawl, which was
impossible considering the time and place. Therefore the crime was
premeditated, and the motive was revenge or fear. The accused had both
these motives, and moreover the slave identified him.
β. The defendant argues that the murder may have been done by robbers who
were scared away before they had robbed the corpse, or by some criminal
who feared the dead man’s testimony, or by some other enemy, who felt
secure because he knew suspicion would fall on the accused. The slave may
have been mistaken or perhaps suborned. If probability is to decide the
case, it is more probable that the defendant would have employed some
one else to do the murder than that the slave would be certain of having
recognized the criminal. The danger of losing a law-suit could not have
seemed so serious as the present danger of losing his life.
γ. The accuser in his second speech ingeniously meets the arguments of β
point by point; and
δ. The defendant criticizes and disposes of the arguments of γ, and
incidentally mentions that he could prove an _alibi_—though he does not
seem to lay any stress on this.
With the exception of the evidence of the slave, now dead, the whole case
rests on a discussion of probabilities.
The Second Tetralogy deals with the death of a boy accidentally killed by
a javelin with which another youth was practising in the gymnasium. The
question to decide was, who was to blame—the accuser maintained that it
was a case of homicide, the defendant suggested unintentional suicide![73]
The Third Tetralogy supposes that an old man has been brutally beaten by
a young man, and died of his injuries a few days later. The defendant
attempts to put the blame first on the dead man, since he struck the
first blow, secondly on the surgeon; and, finding this not plausible
enough, goes into exile: the second speech for the defence is spoken by a
friend of the accused.
The extant speeches composed for real cases may be taken in the order of
their importance.
* * * * *
_On the Murder of Herodes._—Herodes, an Athenian citizen who had settled
at Mitylene, made a voyage to Aenus in Thrace to receive the ransom
of some Thracian captives. He sailed with the accused, a Mitylenean
whose father lived at Aenus. They were driven by a storm to shelter at
Methymna, and there exchanged from their open boat into a decked vessel.
They fell to drinking to pass the time, and Herodes, going ashore one
night, was never heard of again. His companion continued the voyage, and
on returning to Mitylene was charged with murder. It was asserted that a
slave had confessed to having assisted in the murder, and that a letter
had been discovered from the defendant to one Lycinus, supposed to be the
instigator of the crime.
By the laws of the Athenian League such a trial must take place at
Athens; ordinarily a case of murder would come before the Areopagus,
but actually the accused was indicted as a ‘_malefactor_,’[74] was
arrested and brought before an ordinary court. He contends that this is
a grievance, for if the prosecution fails he may still be brought before
the Areopagus. Further, he was kept in prison, all bail being refused.
This was, apparently, illegal.
The trial took place probably about 417 or 416 B.C. The introduction to
the speech has been quoted.[75] The narrative gives first the facts up to
the defendant’s arrival at Athens (§§ 19-24), and shows that probability
is against the prosecution (§§ 25-28); next, the return of one of the
ships to Mitylene, and the confession of the slave under torture (§§
29-30). The slave’s evidence is proved to be worthless (§§ 31-41). The
alleged letter to Lycinus is discussed, and the defendant proves that he
himself had no motive for the murder, and cannot be expected to know who
is the real culprit (§§ 42-73). Odium has been unjustly stirred against
him by the assertion of his father’s disloyalty (§§ 74-80). The absence
of signs of divine anger is a further proof of his innocence (§§ 81-84).
Finally, he appeals for another chance at least, since, if acquitted
now, he may be tried again by the Areopagus (§§ 85-95).
* * * * *
The speech _On the Choreutes_ refers to the death of a boy Diodotus,
who was being trained to sing in a choir at the Thargelia, and was
accidentally poisoned by a drug given him to improve his voice. The
_choregus_ or choir-master was accused of poisoning before the Areopagus.
The extant speech is the second for the defence; the date is probably
about 412 B.C. The speaker comments on the disingenuous action of his
adversaries, who refused to have slaves examined, and introduced much
irrelevant matter. He contrasts the openness of his own conduct. The
epilogue is lost.
* * * * *
The speech _Against a Stepmother on a Charge of Poisoning_ is
sometimes regarded as a mere exercise, but, in striking contrast to
the Tetralogies, this speech contains full and detailed narrative. Its
authenticity has been further questioned, but we have so little material
for judging of the style of Antiphon that it is impossible to pronounce
definitely against the supposition that this speech was composed by him.
It may be that it was an early work; it is certainly less powerful than
the other two genuine speeches.
_The Argument._—A young man accuses his stepmother of having poisoned
his father by the help of another woman, a slave. The father was dining
with Philoneos, a former lover of this woman, and she was persuaded to
administer a love-philtre to the two. Both men died, the woman was put to
death, and the prosecutor now urges that his stepmother, who instigated
the crime, should be punished for her guilt.
Of the speeches known to us only by name or by short fragments, it is
probable that some at any rate were the work of Antiphon the Sophist,
with whom the orator is often confused. A work on rhetoric and a
collection of proëmia and epilogues were also current under the orator’s
name.