Antiphôn the Sophist, believed to be of Athens, and to have lived in the latter half of the fifth century B.C.
Confusion has arisen over his identity: was he a different person from Antiphon the orator and Antiphon the tragedian? It is now generally believed that he was, and that his writings can be distinguished by difference of subject-matter and style.
If so, Antiphon the Sophist was a rhetorician, seer and interpreter of dreams. His chief work was called Truth; of this a portion has been discovered in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus. Other works were rhetorical essays On Concord, and on The State, or The Statesman; and a treatise on dream-interpretation. A treatise entitled The Art of Freedom from Pain, attributed to Antiphon the Orator, is now thought to be by Antiphon the Sophist.
1. (From 'Truth'): If you realise these things, you will know that there exists for it (the mind) no single thing of those things which the person who sees farthest sees with his vision, nor of those things which the person whose knowledge goes furthest knows with his mind.
2. In all men, the mind has the leadership of the body towards both health and disease and everything else.
14. (From 'Truth'): (Nature? Mind?) if robbed of its material would have arranged many excellent things badly.
15. (From 'Truth'): If one buried a bed, and the rotting wood obtained life, it would become not a bed, but wood.
16. (Usual word for 'extend': context unknown).
(From 'Truth', Book I)
17. ('Aphrodite' for 'sexual intercourse').
18. (Word for 'gone over again from the beginning', of arguments, etc.).
19. (Word for 'proceed').
20. ('Exchanges' used for 'combinations' or 'mixings').
21. (Unusual word for 'desire').
(From 'Truth', Book II)
22. (Word for 'everlastingness').
(Names of tribes)
45. Shadowfeet.
46. Longheads.
47. (Troglodytes). Dwellers underground.
48. Man, who, they say, is the most divine of all animals.
49. Now let life proceed, and let him desire marriage and a wife. This day, this night begin a new destiny; for marriage is a great contest for mankind. If the woman turns out to be incompatible, what can one do about the disaster? Divorce is difficult: it means to make enemies of friends, who have the same thoughts, the same breath, and had been valued and had regarded one with esteem. And it is hard if one gets such a possession, that is, if when thinking to get pleasure, one brings home pain.
However, not to speak of malevolence: let us assume the utmost compatibility. What is pleasanter to a man than a wife after his own heart? What is sweeter, especially to a young man? But in the very pleasure lies near at hand the pain; pleasures do not come alone, but are attended by griefs and
58. Whoever, when going against his neighbour with the intention of harming him, is afraid lest by failing to achieve his wishes he may get what he does not wish, is wiser. For his fear means hesitation, and his hesitation means an interval in which often his mind is deflected from his purpose. There can be no reversal of a thing that has happened: it is possible only for what is in the future not to happen. Whoever thinks he will illtreat his neighbours and not suffer himself is unwise. Hopes are not altogether a good thing; such hopes have flung down many into intolerable disaster, and what they thought to inflict on their neighbours, they have suffered themselves for all to see. Prudence in another man can be judged correctly by no one more than he who fortifies his soul against immediate pleasures and can conquer himself. But whoever wishes to gratify his soul immediately, wishes the worse instead of the better.
59. Whoever has not desired or touched the base and the
80. (ib.: Examples of Antiphon's interpretations of dreams: an Olympic competitor dreams that he is driving a four-horse chariot; the interpreter says 'You will win', but Antiphon says 'You will lose, because four have run before you'. Another competitor dreams that he is an eagle; this is thought to mean victory, but Antiphon says 'You will lose', because the eagle pursues other birds and so comes after).
81. (Seneca: Junius Otho published four books on 'Specious Pleas', 1 which were sometimes ascribed to Antiphon because there was so much about dreams in them).
81a. (Melampus on Twitchings: If the right eye twitches, this according to Phêmonoê, the Egyptians and Antiphon, means that one will overcome one's enemies. If the upper eyelid twitches, this means gain; according to Antiphon, health and success, but in a slave, treachery; for a widow, a journey).
82-117. (Fragments, mostly single words, which may come from the Sophist or the Orator).
118. (Title: On Farming': probably 'Antiphon' here should read 'Androtion').
145:1 Valueless. See Companion, pp. 396-7.
151:1 A proverb.
153:1 Colores, a technical term in rhetoric: Quintilian, IV. ii. 88.