Antiphon

Biography

Born in the Dème Attic from Rhamnos, Antiphon is the son of Sophilus, an Athenian aristocrat and Sophiste. His/her grandfather is an enthusiastic support of the Pisistratides. Antiphon learns the art of public speaking from his/her father and starts a career of logographe and sophist, teacher in his turn the Rhétorique.

After having been the Master of Thucydide, which then defends it with heat in its writings, it engages in policy on the end of its life: it takes part in the oligarchical revolution of the Four hundred in -411. With the fall of the mode, in -410, it is judged for treason, and in spite of an impassioned speech of defense, whose Thucydide says that it is “most perfect that one ever heard in a capital business”, it is condemned to drink the conium this same year.

The primary sources relating to Antiphon are, in addition to its own speeches, Thucydide and the pseudoone, in the Vie of the ten speakers . It should be noted that, according to certain contemporary authors, Antiphon the sophist is perhaps distinct from Antiphon the logographe.

Speech

If the tradition allots 60 speeches to Antiphon, we let us preserve only six in entirety of them, as well as fragments of twenty others. The first speech which we have goes back to 430 av. J. - C.

The tradition makes of him the founder of the legal eloquence, one of the three types of Greek eloquence - he is besides the first speaker whose speeches were published. It is a logographe, three of the speeches which we preserve concern of the businesses of homicide. He is also the author of the Tétralogies , the exercises rhetorics putting in glance two speeches (the first and the second required by the Athenian procedure) of the charge and two speeches (idem) of defense, also for businesses of homicide.

Antiphon teaches, and shows in its works, of the technical processes to make a good speech. Initially, he recommends a provision in five parts, then he gives a list of argument-type, them τόποι / topoi usable in all the pleadings. It is also him which, according to the tradition, introduced the technique of probable, eliminating in turn the incredible assumptions to prove the innocence or the culpability of the defendant.

Antiphon can be regarded as one of the precursors of the psychoanalysis. He is the inventor of a method of interpretation of the dreams as well as therapy of the heart based on the speech.

Work mathematical

Antiphon was also a good mathematician. Antiphon, at the sides of his/her Bryson companion, summer the first to give a limit lower and higher of pi thanks to the calculation of the surface of registered polygons and circonsrits than the circle. It tried to apply this method to solve the Quadrature of the circle, problem of which since showed that it did not have a solution.

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