Talk:Antiphon (orator)

Fr. via Untersteiner

Expanded provenance on this fragment is desirable. Shall we presume Mario Untersteiner, writing The Sophists  ? (Weirpwoer 05:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)).

Untersteiner was quoting from Oxyrhynchus Papyrus #1364 fragment 2, a fragment of Antiphon's (now lost) On Truth. Since Untersteiner (1954), our knowledge of the passage has expanded by the discovery of a new fragment: Oxyrhynchus Papyrus #3647 (published in 1984). All the extant fragments are collected in Gerard Pendrick's Antiphon the Sophist: The Fragments (2002, Cambridge U. Press). Pendrick gives the label "F44(b)" to the passage Untersteiner quoted. Pendrick's translation is this (the ellipses "..." are Pendrick's; he uses them to indicate a place in the papyrus where the words are illegible; the brackets are also his, indicating his educated guess as to an obscure part of the fragments):

...[the laws of those near by] we know and observe, the laws of those who live far off we neither know nor observe. Now in this we have become barbarians in one another's eyes; for by birth, at least, we are all naturally adapted in every respect to be either Greeks or barbarians. It is possible to examine...things by nature necessary for all human beings...none of us has been marked off as either barbarians or Greek. For we all breathe into the air by our mouth and nostrils; we laugh when we are happy and cry when we are sad; we take in sounds with our sense of hearing; we see with our sight and with the aid of the visual ray; we work with our hands; we walk with our feet... (Pendrick pp. 181-183)

Pendrick evidently disagrees with Untersteiner's interpretation (and hence with the one presented in the current version of this Wikiarticle), saying, "Older interpreters generally read into this fragment an egalitarian-spirited argument attacking the artificiality of distinctions customarily drawn between the rich and the poor, high-born and low-born, slave and free. But this type of interpretation has now been demolished by the evidence of the new papyrus (P.Oxy. 3647), which eliminates the textual supplements on which alone it rested" (p. 351, italics added). As I understand it, the "older interpretation" was based on speculation about parts of the passage which were obscure or illegible in Oxyrhynchus Papyrus #1364; Oxyrhynchus Papyrus #3647 revealed parts of the passage which were previously obscure and which rule out the speculations based on #1364. In light of this, it may be good to revise some of the claims made in the Wikiarticle. The rest of Pendrick's commentary is worth consulting.Isokrates 20:46, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

As Pendrick makes clear, Untersteiner's version of the passage (beginning "[Those born of illustrious fa]thers we respect and honour, whereas those who come from an undistinguished house....") represents a reading of the text now known to be mistaken: "[T]he older supplements of Grenfell and Hunt, Wilamowitz, Schmidt, and Bignone imported into the passage the subject of social or economic class-distinctions. [...] All have been definitively ruled out by the evidence of the new papyrus" (Pendrick p. 356). According to Pendrick, P.Oxy. 3647 "demostrates that the argument [in the passage] has nothing to do with class-distinctions..." (p. 23). So Antiphon was not advocating a natural rights theory or arguing that all humans are equal. All he was doing is pointing out that the "Greek vs. barbarian" distinction is non-natural. Isokrates (talk) 20:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

See also p. 98 n. 41 of Richard Winton's "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Winton agrees with Pendrick that the fragment doesn't support an egalitarian interpretation.Isokrates (talk) 01:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I deleted 76.168.251.145's 5 July 2011 edits which inserted a claim that "the actual text" of On Truth makes "the egalitarian thrust" of DK 87B44b "unmistakable"; the claim cited only Mario Untersteiner's 1954 translation as evidence. Evidently 76.168.251.145 didn't bother to reader my Talk comments (see above) on this very issue. Let me explain, again, why the Untersteiner's translation isn't a reflection of "the actual text". Untersteiner's "those born of illustrious fathers" and "those who come from an undistinguished house" never corresponded to anything that was actually in any of the available manuscripts. Rather, Untersteiner—as most translators and commentators did before the 1984 publication of P.Oxy. 3647—was relying on the speculation of scholars who, dealing with a text more fragmentary than P.Oxy. 3647, were simply guessing that the two groups in question represented social or economic classes (rich and poor, high-born and low-born, slave and free) (see Pendrick's commentary p. 356). P.Oxy. 3647 makes it explicitly clear that the two groups in question were those who live far off (tōn tēlou oikouvtōn) and those who are nearer (egchuterōn) or natives (egchōrōn) (see Pendrick pp. 356-357), not Untersteiner's "those who come from an undistinguished house" and "those born of illustrious fathers". What the actual text, therefore, makes unmistakable is that the earlier speculation of scholars involved an incorrect assumption of Antiphon's subject matter, as both Pendrick and Winton explain. See my earlier comments above. Isokrates (talk) 23:30, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Time

Antiphon's words on time are of major interest today. His assertion that "time is a thought or a measure, not a substance" seems to contradict our contemporary science. Our scientists have no hesitation about declaring that time, which is now considered to be a dimension such as space, is simply a kind of fabric or field that exists in the world as an external object that can be warped or bent. Kant, on the other hand, asserted that time is a way that the mind experiences objects.Lestrade 17:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Two Different Antiphons, or just one?

The present article doesn't fairly represent the controversy over whether or not Antiphon the Sophist (mentioned in Xenophon's Memorabilia) and Antiphon of Rhamnus are one and the same. In fact, the controversy has by no means been settled, and is alive and ongoing. Two recent examples of reputable scholars who differ on this matter are: Michael Gagarin who favors the identification (see his 2002 Antiphon the Athenian, U. of Texas Press), and Gerard Pendrick who rejects it (see his 2002 Antiphon the Sophist, Cambridge U. Press).

Since nobody has responded to this issue, I made some changes to make the article more NPOV with regard to this issue. Isokrates 11:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Removing names

Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau should not be mentioned in the article - so I have removed their names.

Thomas Hobbes opposed (indeed fanatically opposed) the limited government philosophy that eventually led to the American Declaration of Independence (see any work of Thomas Hobbes - for example his "Leviathan"), and Rousseau reinterpreted individual liberty to mean collective liberty - even against the will of the majority of individuals, as he makes clear in his work the "Social Contract" (the "Lawgiver" may coerce any individual - indeed even the majority of individuals if they are acting against their supposedly true interests). I have been told that I may not explain that neither Thomas Hobbes or Rousseau had anything to do with the natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence - so I have simply removed the mention of their names, as it is radically misleading to associate Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau with just about the OPPOSITE of what they actually believed. 90.195.107.55 (talk) 18:04, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Birth and Death Dates

There are at least two sources that confirm the lifespan of Antiphon the Sophist as 480-411 BCE. <ref>https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antiphon-Greek-writer-and-statesman<ref> <ref>http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Antiphon.html<ref> This lifespan should be added to clearly indicate this is for Antiphon the Sophist only, as it is unclear Antiphon of Rhamnus is the same man. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nerdy.Alex (talk • contribs) 15:45, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Those are the same dates of Antiphon of Rhamnus (p. 49, Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, 2nd edition, 2014). Isokrates (talk) 02:15, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Reorganisation of the Antiphon articles

The Antiphon articles are, for various reasons, really rather a mess, and I intend to do certain things to rectify the worst of this. Really, these articles need a rewrite, but this will clear things up and allow me or someone else to rewrite them as and when possible. What I am about to do, though, will not be self-explanatory to any passing editor, so I will explain it here, and copy a link to this section into my edit summaries to make things clear.

Note the following:

• There is longstanding confusion, indeed going back to antiquity, regarding the identity of several people named Antiphon who lived in fifth and fourth century BC Greece. This is a continuing scholarly controversy. By far the most significant of these people are Antiphon the Orator (of Rhamnous) and Antiphon the Sophist.
• There are a number of Wikipedia articles on various of these people called Antiphon, a list of which is at Antiphon (disambiguation).
• These articles, with the exception of Antiphon (orator), are all fundamentally based on Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, the most relevant page of which can be found here: [1]. This was done in accordance with WP:PDR.
• Accordingly, the articles, as they stand, are distributed largely according to Smith's views on which men named Antiphon were to be identified, and which were to be distinguished.
• No confusion arises regarding Antiphon (arsonist) (Smith's Antiphon (5)), Antiphon (writer) (Smith's Antiphon (7)), or Antiphon brother of Plato (Smith's Antiphon (4)), since no-one has ever supposed these are anybody except themselves. Nor is there any problem with Smith's Antiphon (8), who has no Wikipedia article, and doesn't especially warrant one.
• Modern scholars are totally united in agreeing that Antiphon (tragic poet) (Smith's Antiphon (2)) cannot be the same as Antiphon the Orator, and are more or less united in agreeing that Antiphon (tragic poet) cannot be the same as Antiphon the Sophist. (On this, see Pendrick, Antiphon the Sophist, p.2.) This means that, for present purposes, we can also leave Antiphon (tragic poet) alone.
• This leaves Smith's Antiphons (1), (3), and (6). (1) is the Orator, and (6) is the Sophist.
• But Smith, unfortunately, has, as far as I can see, made a complete mess of his entry (3), on which the Wikipedia article Antiphon (epic poet) is based. His entry (3) is based on the entry for "Antiphon" in the ancient encyclopaedia the Suda (an entry that can be found on Pendrick p.90-91). The Suda, though, does not say what Smith represents it as saying. The Suda (and no "others") lists one Antiphon who is a "interpreter of signs, epic poet and sophist", and then lists Antiphon the Orator, and then thirdly lists the dream-interpreter, who wrote a treatise on dreams (which is mentioned elsewhere, as Smith says, which is an important and notable work, and of which there are surviving fragments). That is, as three different people. But Smith is under the impression that the "interpreter of signs, epic poet and sophist" is the same as the dream-interpreter. This is not a real scholarly view, but just Smith's confusion, as far as I can see; Pendrick, who is very thorough, mentions no such possibility. Consequently, the article Antiphon (epic poet) follows Smith in making the epic poet (who is only known from the Suda) and the dream-interpreter into one person. Thus Antiphon (epic poet) is a downright misleading article, and absolutely requires correction.
• Having got all that out of the way, the modern scholarly controversy revolves around two points. Firstly and primarily, there is no agreement on whether Antiphon the Orator and Antiphon the Sophist were the same person. Secondly, there is no agreement as to whether Antiphon the Sophist (whether or not he was also the Orator) wrote the treatise on dreams, or whether Antiphon the Sophist and Antiphon the dream-interpreter should be considered different people; on this point, both Pendrick and Laks/Most (in the new Loeb Early Greek Philosophy vol. IX) work on the basis that Antiphon the dream-interpreter wasn't a separate person, but both acknowledge some doubt (esp. Pendrick p.24-25).

Therefore, what I am going to do is the following:

• Remove the On Dreams section in Antiphon (epic poet), and correct the article to reflect that he is only mentioned briefly in the Suda.
• Reorganise things into three separate articles. This is the best way of being both NPOV and clear on the issue of which of the three disputed Antiphons (the Orator, the Sophist and the dream-interpreter) is which. I will place in the lede of Antiphon (orator) a statement to the effect that the Sophistical works and the treatise on dreams are sometimes attributed to the Orator, as well as the oratorical works discussed in that article. I will place equivalent statements of a suitable nature in the ledes of the other two articles.
• Since almost nothing is known about the Sophist and the dream-interpreter biographically speaking and it is their works that are notable, I will name these two articles Sophistic works of Antiphon (by moving it from Antiphon (sophist)) and Interpretation of Dreams (Antiphon) (by creating a new article here). This, again, will serve to make things as NPOV and clear as possible, since this layout allows equally for all the positions taken by modern scholars regarding the controversy.

I hope this is clear, and serves as a tolerable explanation to anyone who is curious. As I say, ideally I will edit these articles further into something better, but this is necessary groundwork for me or anyone else to do so. Dionysodorus (talk) 18:10, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I have now carried out the plan described above; please let me know here if there are any issues with how it has worked out, and I will try to resolve them. Dionysodorus (talk) 00:20, 20 August 2017 (UTC)