Antiphon and Andocides

5. On the Murder of Herodes

5. ON THE MURDER OF HERODES Antiphon’s longest surviving speech,On the Murder of Herodes, was regarded in antiquity as one of his best. Modern opinion generally agrees, though our ignorance on several important issues makes any assessment of the argument difficult. Being a defense speech, it can be selective in its narration of events, for the jurors would already have been given an account by the prosecution. The mixture of substantive and procedural issues also complicates our assessment. The speech was delivered about a decade after the Mytilenean revolt in 427 bc. As reported by Thucydides (3.1–50), Mytilene, the main city on the island of Lesbos and one of Athens’ most powerful and important allies in the Peloponnesian War, rebelled against Athenian dominance. Athens put down the revolt, executed its leaders, and sent Athenian settlers, who divided up the territory. The Mytileneans continued to farm the land, paying an annual rent. It is a reasonable guess that Herodes was one of these Athenian settlers. The speaker is a young Mytilenean, whose name, according to a late source, is Euxitheus. His father had played some part in this revolt (5.74–80) and was apparently living in voluntary exile in Thrace. We may imagine that the Athenian jurors would still have strong memories of the event and might be biased against any Mytilenean, though it is impossible to know how this would have affected their verdict. The events, as best we can reconstruct them, are as follows: Euxitheus was traveling on the same boat as Herodes from Mytilene to Thrace, when they were forced by a storm to put in at a small harbor on the north shore of Lesbos. There they waited out the storm, drinking on another boat in the harbor, one that had a roof. Sometime dur- ing the night Herodes disappeared and was not seen again. A search was made, but no body was ever found. Euxitheus then continued to Thrace, but when he later returned to Mytilene, he was accused of murdering Herodes. In his absence Herodes’ relatives had apparently interrogated a slave who initially denied any knowledge of the crime but later, under torture, confessed to assisting Euxitheus in the murder . His story was that they had killed Herodes on shore, striking him with a rock, and had dumped his body at sea from a small boat. The prosecution also presented an incriminating note, allegedly written by Euxitheus to a certain Lycinus. Both men had previously had dealings with Herodes. It is not clear what specific motive, if any, the prosecution gave for the crime. Euxitheus was then brought to Athens for trial. In his defense, Euxitheus first argues vehemently against the procedure used to prosecute him (see below). He then disputes the facts, claiming the events that night happened by chance and could not have been planned and pointing to several contradictions in the prosecution ’s case. Euxitheus also emphasizes that the slave’s story was extracted from him by torture when Euxitheus was absent, and the prosecution then put the slave to death, their purpose being (he says) to prevent Euxitheus from questioning him and exposing the truth. Another witness, a free man, had given different testimony, stating that Euxitheus never left the boat that night. Euxitheus also accuses the prosecution of planting the note to Lycinus and claims, moreover, that neither he nor Lycinus had any motive for killing Herodes. He concludes that the prosecution do not know who killed Herodes, and he accuses them rather vaguely of manufacturing the case against him for their own profit. The procedural issue is thorny. The regular procedure for prosecuting a homicide case was a dikē phonou (‘‘suit for homicide’’), which would be tried before the Areopagus and supervised by the Basileus. Once the Basileus accepted the case, the accused was banned from most sacred and public places until the trial (3.1.2n) but was not otherwise constrained. Other special rules applied to homicide cases concerning such matters as oaths, and the accused could voluntarily go into exile any time before his second speech (4.4.1n). Euxitheus apparently came to Athens expecting to face a dikē phonou, but instead 5. on the murder of herodes 49 he was arrested by the special procedure of apagōgē (see Series Introduction ) normally used against specific classes of common criminals called kakourgoi (‘‘evil-doers’’; see 2...