SOURCE: Sealey, R. “The Tetralogies Ascribed to Antiphon.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 114 (1984): 71-85.

In the following essay, Sealey argues that Antiphon's Tetralogies do not provide conclusive evidence about the nature of Athenian legal practice.

I

The text of the speeches of Antiphon depends mainly on two manuscripts, neither of them particularly old or particularly good. One of them, now in London, was written in the thirteenth century. The other, written in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, is in Oxford. The other extant manuscripts are derived from the one in London. The two main manuscripts are themselves derived closely from their archetype.¹ They provide the three Tetralogies, conventionally numbered 2, 3, and 4, as well as the three speeches (1, 5, 6), whose authenticity is not now doubted. Thus the Tetralogies were attributed to Antiphon at the time when the archetype was written rather before the thirteenth century.

The external evidence on the...