Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/109

EXECUTION OF ANTIPHON. ^7 properties were confiscated, their houses were directed to ba razed, and the vacant site to be marked by columns, with the inscription : " The residence of Antiphon the traitor, of Ar- cheptolemus the traitor." They were not permitted to be buried either in Attica, or in any territory subject to Athenian dominion. 1 Their children, both legitimate and illegitimate, were deprived of the citizenship ; and the citizen who should adopt any descendant of either of them, was to be himself in like manner disfranchised. Such was the sentence passed by the dikastery. pursuant to the Athenian law of treason. It was directed to be engraved on the same brazen column as the decree of honor to the slayers of Phrynichus. From that column it was transcribed, and has thus passed into history. 1 1 So, Themistoklus. as a traitor, was not allowed to be buried in Attica (Thucyd. i, 138 ; Cornel. Nepos. Vit. Themistocl. ii, 10). His friends are said to have brought his bones thither secretly. 2 It is given at length in Pseudo-Plutarch, Vit. x, Oratt. pp. 833, 834. It was preserved by Caicilius, a Sicilian and rhetorical teacher, of the Augus- tan age ; who possessed sixty orations ascribed to Antiphon, twenty-five of which he considered spurious. Antiphon left a daughter, whom Kallasschrus sued for in marriage, pursu ant to the forms of law, being entitled to do so on the score of near relation ship (l~ ediKuaaTo). Kallasschrus was himself one of the Four Hundred, perhaps a brother of Kritias. It seems singular that the legal power of suing at law for a female in marriage, by right of near kin (TOV iTritiiKa&a&ai), could extend to a female disfranchised and debarred from all rights of citi xcnship. If we may believe Harpokration, Andron, who made the motion in the senate for sending Antiphon and Archcptolemus to trial, had been himself a member of the Four Hundred oligarchs, as well as Theramenes (Harp. v. "Arrfpuv). The note of Dr. Arnold upon that passage (viii, 68) wherein ThucydidSs calls Antiphon upsry ovdevbf forepof, "inferior to no man in virtue," well deserves to be consulted. This passage shows, in a remarkable manner, what were t>e political and private qualities which determined the esteem of Thn- cvdides. It shows that his sympathies went along with the oligarchical party; and that, while the exaggerations of opposition-speakers, or demagogues, such as those which he imputes to Klcon and Hyperbolas, provoked his bit' ter hatred, exaggerations of the oligarchical warfare, or multiplied assassi- nations, did not mnkc him like a man the worse. But it shows, at the same time, his great candor in the narration of facts ; for he gives an undisguised revelation both of the assassinations, and of the treason, of Antiphon