Antiphon and Andocides

The Tetralogies

THE TETRALOGIES The three Tetralogies1 are artificial exercises in the form of speeches to an Athenian court (where each litigant in a private case would give two speeches). They illustrate different types of argument. In the first the facts are in dispute: did the accused do it? In the second the facts are admitted, but the legal consequences of those facts are in dispute: should the defendant be held legally responsible for the boy’s death? In the third several issues are raised, but the main dispute concerns justification: does the defendant’s claim of self-defense justify his actions ? The apparent aim of these exercises is to provide examples of legal argumentation that would provide useful training for the variety of cases a litigant might face (not just homicide). As such, they share certain features: narratives are omitted or reduced to the bare essentials necessary to understand the case, and no witnesses are called to testify. Primary attention is given to the arguments, which become rather complex, especially as argument is answered by counterargument , which is then answered in turn. The issue of pollution for homicide is prominent in the prologues and epilogues of all three Tetralogies. Both sides argue that a killer is polluted and his pollution also pollutes the whole city. Both sides claim a religious duty to see that the true killer is tried and convicted. Convicting an innocent man or not convicting the true killer will bring pollution on whichever litigant errs and perhaps also on the jurors. If the killer goes free, moreover, the whole city will suffer: its 1 On the question of the authenticity of the Tetralogies, see the Introduction to Antiphon above. sanctuaries will be defiled and its crops ruined. Pollution is much less prominent, however, in Antiphon’s other speeches (cf. 5.81–83) and does not seem to have been an important factor in actual Athenian homicide law. Later rhetoricians placed the Tetralogies in their general classification of legal cases according to the ‘‘issue’’ (stasis; Latinstatus) raised by the case, the most basic division being (to oversimplify) between questions of fact and questions of law—such as whether the facts constitute an offense, whether the act was otherwise justified, and so forth.2 18 antiphon 2 See further Kennedy 1963: 306–314. ...