Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/40

 1ft HISTORY OF negotiation with Tissaphernes. But the cooperation and aggres live movement of the clubs which he had originated was prose cuted with increased ardor during his absence, and even fell intt Sands more organizing and effective than his own. The rhetori cal teacher Antiphon, of the derne llhamnus, took it in hand especially, acquired the confidence of the clubs, and drew the plan of campaign against the democracy. He was a man esti- mable in private life, and not open to pecuniary corruption : in other respects, of preeminent ability, in contrivance, judgment, speech, and action. The profession to which he belonged, gener- ally unpopular among the democracy, excluding him from taking rank as a speaker either in the public assembly or the dikastery : for a rhetorical teacher, contending in either of them against a private speaker, to repeat a remark already once made, was con- sidered to stand at the same unfair advantage, as a fencing-master fighting a duel with a gentleman would be held to stand in mod- ern times. Thus debarred himself from the showy celebrity of Athenian political life, Antiphon became only the more consum mate, as a master of advice, calculation, scheming, and rhetor- ical composition, 1 to assist the celebrity of others ; insomuch that The Guilds in the European cities during the Middle Ages, usually sworn to by every member, and called conjurationes Amicitice, bear in many respects a resemblance to these %vvu[i6aiai ; though the judicial proceedings in the mediaeval cities, being so much less popular than at Athens, narrowed their range of interference in this direction : their political importance, however, was quite equal. ( See Wilda, Das Gildeu Wesen des Mittelalters, Abschn. ii, p. 167, etc.) " Omnes autem ad Amicitiam pertinentes villae per^/w/m et sac>-amentum firmaverunt, quod unns subveniat alteri tanquam fratri suo in utili et hon- esto," (ib. p. 148.) 1 The person described by Krito, in the Euthydemus of Plato (c. 31, p. 305, C.), as having censured Sokrates for conversing with Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, is presented exactly like Antiphon in Thucydides : rjKLcra. irf) rbv Ata prjrup oi>6e olfiat Train-ore aiirov ini diKaarf/piov avapefiijKevai uM? knaieiv OVTOV aoi irepi TOV irpu.yfj.arof, vij rbv Ata, Kal 6eivbv dvai Kal 6tivoi)f %.6-yovf frvridsvai. Heindorf thinks that Isokrates is here meant : Grocn van Prinsterer talks of Lysias; Winkelmann, of Thrasymachus. The description would fit Antiphon as well as either of these three : though Stallbaum may perhaps be right in supposing no particular individual to ha^ e been in the rai* d of Plato