Antiphon in the New Millennium

Abstract

This paper is an overview — in it I take a critical look at works that have come out in recent years about Antiphon. My primary focus is on four books: two scholarly works on Antiphon, one by Annie Hourcade and another by Michael Gagarin, an edition of the fragments of Antiphon’s treatises with a detailed commentary by Gerard Pendrick, and, finally, a new edition of Antiphon’s speeches prepared by Mervin Dilts and David Murphy. There is still a dispute among scholars about the authorship of the Corpus Antiphonteum. Some (the separatists) consider that there were separate authors for the speeches, on the one hand, and for the treatises, on the other — Antiphon the orator and Antiphon the sophist, respectively. Others (the unitarians) insist that there was a single author for both the speeches and the treatises. In the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, the separatists had the upper hand, but the situation slowly began to change, and now most scholars — rightly so in my opinion — argue for a single authorship. The separatists are compelled to divide the biographical testimonies of Antiphon between the orator and the sophist. But in the case of a single Antiphon, it turns out there is more than a little information about that person. In this paper, I present a review of scholarly opinion about evidence according to which Antiphon invented τέχνη ἀλυπίας and opened a psychotherapeutic clinic, where he tried to help his patients using verbal therapy. Some scholars call the tradition of the clinic into question. The separatists attribute any evidence about it to Antiphon the sophist. Like other scholars, I uphold the credibility of the clinic. I also take a look at the image of Antiphon presented by Xenophon (Mem. 1, 6.). Many scholars consider Xenophon’s story to be fictitious or reject it outright. The separatists believe that Xenophon calls Antiphon a sophist in the very first sentence of the sixth chapter in order to distinguish him from his namesake, Antiphon the orator. I think Xenophon’s goal is different. Socrates, in conversation with Antiphon during their second meeting, which Xenophon describes later on in the same chapter, likens sophists to πόρνοι (Mem. 1. 6. 13). Obviously, Xenophon calls Antiphon a sophist because he intends that the shameful implications of this comparison be applied first and foremost to him. Hourcade and Gagarin want to show that the author of the treatises and the speeches was one and the same person. Even though Pendrick is a separatist, the parallels he draws between the fragments of the treatises and individual passages in the speeches also, I think, favor the idea of a single Antiphon. I conclude that, thanks to the work of these scholars, Antiphon has, although not yet fully, been put back together again.