"Gagarin demonstrates persuasively that Antiphon the logographer is identical with the Antiphon who made intellectual contributions on more abstract topics." —Mervin R. Dilts, Professor of Classics, New York University Antiphon was a fifth-century Athenian intellectual (ca. 480-411 BCE) who created the profession of speechwriting while serving as an influential and highly sought-out adviser to litigants in the Athenian courts. Three of his speeches are preserved, together with three sets of Tetralogies (four hypothetical paired speeches), whose authenticity is sometimes doubted. Fragments (...) also survive of intellectual treatises on subjects including justice, law, and nature (physis), which are often attributed to a separate Antiphon the Sophist. Were these two Antiphons really one and the same individual, endowed with a wide-ranging mind ready to tackle most of the diverse intellectual interests of his day? Through an analysis of all these writings, this book convincingly argues that they were composed by a single individual, Antiphon the Athenian. Michael Gagarin sets close readings of individual works within a wider discussion of the fifth-century Athenian intellectual climate and the philosophical ferment known as the sophistic movement. This enables him to demonstrate the overall coherence of Antiphon's interests and writings and to show how he was a pivotal figure between the sophists and the Attic orators of the fourth century. In addition, Gagarin's argument allows us to reassess the work of the sophists as a whole, so that they can now be seen as primarily interested in logos (speech, argument) and as precursors of fourth-century rhetoric, rather than in their usual role as foils for Plato. (shrink)

This edition of early Greek writings on social and political issues includes works by more than thirty authors. There is a particular emphasis on the sophists, with the inclusion of all of their significant surviving texts, and the works of Alcidamas, Antisthenes and the 'Old Oligarch' are also represented. In addition there are excerpts from early poets such as Homer, Hesiod and Solon, the three great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, medical writers and presocratic philosophers. (...) Besides political theory, areas represented include early anthropology, sociology, ethics and rhetoric, and the wide range of issues discussed includes human nature, the origin of human society, the origin of law, the nature of justice, the forms of good government, the distribution of wealth, and the distribution of power among genders and social classes. (shrink)

This article shows that important questions remain to be answered about the topics the sophists studied and taught, and their views, both positive and negative, about truth, religion, and convention. The sophists are united more by common methods and attitudes than by common interests. All sophists, for example, challenged traditional thinking, often in ways that went far beyond questioning the existence of the gods, or the truth of traditional myths, or customary moral rules, all of which had been questioned before. (...) Gorgias, for example argued that nothing exists; Protagoras found fault with Homer's Greek; and Antiphon presented arguments for the innocence of someone who seems obviously guilty. In challenging traditional views, the sophists liked to use deliberately provocative, sometimes paradoxical arguments that seem aimed at capturing the audience's attention rather than enlightening them. (shrink)

This paper seeks to give a more precise grounding to the question of relevance in Athenian forensic argument with a specific focus on the speeches delivered by Aeschines and Demosthenes in the case On the Crown. I argue that in Athenian litigation relevance can be determined quite precisely by the specific terms of the accusation, and that the litigants are well aware of this standard and take care to make their arguments relevant or to justify them if they may appear (...) to be “outside the issue.” Because all the issues specified in the accusation are legally relevant, the distinction commonly drawn between legal and political arguments has no place in a discussion of relevance. The effect of this rule of relevance, I argue, is not to promote fairness but to increase the advantage enjoyed by the plaintiff. I conclude with a few observations on the Athenian view of law which, I suggest, was considerably broader than ours. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 1 Seiten: 329-332.

Les penseurs qu’aujourd’hui nous appelons les sophistes ont été rassemblés en tant que groupe ou école de pensée par Platon. Platon, comme on l’a souvent dit, nous a donné (à dessein ou non) une impres­sion fausse de l’unité de ce groupe et de ses idées au ve siècle. À cette époque – et même au ive siècle – le mot « sophiste » fut une appellation souple, et les membres de ce groupe ont soutenu des idées et des posi­tions intellectuelles (...) diverses. Platon lui-même nous montre clairement, surtout dans le Protagoras, que les sophistes étaient plutôt rivaux que col­lègues dans un mouvement intellectuel cohérent. (shrink)