The Truth of Antiphon

Abstract

IN A PAPER published in Proceedings of Cambridge Philological Society: 1960-61' I tried to show that there lived in Athens in fifth century an Antiphon who was a teacher of rhetoric and author of books called Truth and About Concord, who wrote about interpretation of dreams, competed for pupils with Socrates, and set himself up in contrast to him; who was teacher, or at any rate friend, of Thucydides; and was active in organising revolution of Four Hundred. The present article assumes conclusions of that paper, and will discuss: I. text and meaning of first of fragments cited by Galen from first book of Truth, II. argument of Truth, and its place in debate about knowability of ToX OvT0, which attracted all thinkers of time. A final section, III, will consider survey of this debate given by Plato in Cratylus. One point should be made at outset. The Truth, even if we had whole of it in front of us, would have been difficult to understand. Hermogenes, who appears to have enjoyed that advantage, wrote:, the author is not a bit politician (7toXLLX64 P'V -XL=0' ?a'=LV)2 but is grand and verbose, particularly in his habit of treating every subject by means of categorical assertions, characteristic of a style which is pompous and aims at grandeur. His diction is elevated and rugged, not to say harsh, and employs amplification without achieving clarity, with result that he confuses argument and is usually obscure. But he is painstaking as well in his composition and takes delight in even balancing of clauses. I should not however say that author has any special character or even real style of his own: nor would I allow him cleverness, except of a superficial kind which is not real cleverness at all. We should bear this criticism in mind as we attempt to extract a meaning from fragments.