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Antiphon

Antiphon

c. 480 BCE–c. 411 BCE · Athens

Antiphon (c. 480 - 411 BCE) was the earliest of the canonical "Ten Attic Orators" whose works survive. An Athenian intellectual and speechwriter active in the late fifth century BCE, he composed courtroom speeches, including sets of model speeches for and against imagined homicide cases. He was also a leading figure in the short-lived oligarchic coup of 411 BCE, after which he was tried and executed.

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Stop 1 of 1480 BCE–411 BCELived

AthensAttica (Greece)

What they did here

Earliest of the Attic orators.

About Athens

Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.

In Athens at the same time

Aeschylus, Themistocles, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Gorgias of Leontini

Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time

See other sages who lived in Athens→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Antiphon’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Antiphon’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(7)