Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/108

 86 HISTORY OF GREECE. was to be dealt with according to the penal law of the city against traitors, or persons guilty of treason. 1 Though all the three persons thus indicated were at Athens, or at least were supposed to be there, on the day when this reso- lution was passed by the senate, yet, before it was executed, Onomakles had fled ; so that Antiphon and Archeptolemus only were imprisoned for trial. They too must have had ample op- portunity for leaving the city, and we might have presumed that Antiphon would have thought it quite as necessary to retire as Peisander and Alexikles. So acute a man as he, at no time very popular, must have known that now at least he had drawn the sword against his fellow-citizens in a manner which could never be forgiven. However, he chose voluntarily to stay: and this man, who had given orders for taking off so many of the democratical speakers by private assassination, received from the democracy, when triumphant, full notice and fair trial on a dis- tinct and specific charge. The speech which he made in his defence, though it did not procure acquittal, was listened to, not merely with patience, but with admiration ; as we may judge from the powerful and lasting effect which it produced. Thucydides describes it as the most magnificent defence against a capital charge which had ever come before him ; 2 and the poet Agathon, doubtless a hearer, warmly complimented Antiphon on his elo- quence ; to which the latter replied, that the approval of one such discerning judge was in his eyes an ample compensation for the unfriendly verdict of the multitude. Both he and Archep- tolemus were found guilty by the dikastery and condemned to the penalties of treason. They were handed over to the magis- trates called the Eleven, the chiefs of executive justice at Athens, to be put to death by the customary draught of hemlock. Their 1 Plutarch, Vit. x, Oratt. p. 834 ; compare Xenophon, Hellenic, i, 7, 22. Apolexis was one of the accusers of Antiphon: see Harpokration, v. 2ra- GKJTIJf. 2 Thncyd. viii, 68 ; Aristotel. Ethic. Eudem. iii, 5. Riihnken seems quite right (Dissertat. De Antiphont. p. 818, Reisk.) in considering the oration mpl fieTdcrrdaeue to be Antiphon's defence of himself; though "Westermann (Geschichte der Griesch. Beredsamkeit, p. 277} con- troverts this opinion. This oration is alladed to in several of the articles in Harpokration.