page_title: Against the Stepmother for Poisoning
section_title: Speech
hierarchical_section_title: Against the Stepmother for Poisoning / Speech
caption_attribution_description: English: Clytemnestra hesitates before killing the sleeping Agamemnon. On the left, Aegisthus urges her on. Español: Clytemnestra vacila antes de matar al durmiente Agamenón. A la izquierda, Egisto la incita. Français&#160;: Clytemnestre hésitant avant de frapper Agamemnon endormi. À gauche, Égisthe en train de la pousser.
context_page_description: Against the Stepmother for Poisoning is one of fifteen extant speeches by the Athenian orator Antiphon. It is a speech for the prosecution in the case of a woman accused by her stepson of arranging for the murder of his father, her husband. As with most surviving legal speeches from classical Athens, the outcome of the case is unknown.
context_section_description: The speech, written for the prosecution in a murder trial, is Antiphon's only surviving speech for the prosecution.  The plaintiff accuses his stepmother of having murdered his father while he was a child.  The speech attempts to prove that the stepmother arranged for her husband to be given a drug with the intention of killing him.  The case rests on the argument that the stepmother persuaded another woman, the mistress of her husband's friend Philoneus, to poison her husband.  The speaker never explains how he came to learn of this conspiracy, and Victoria Wohl says that he may have made it up entirely.
  Aside from the assertion that the stepmother had previously attempted to poison her husband, the speaker provides no evidence of his claims.  Instead, he appeals to the jurors' fear of betrayal by their wives, and compares his stepmother's actions to those of Clytemnestra murdering Agamemnon.  Esther Eidinow notes that the speech is also reminiscent of the story of Medea, while Victoria Wohl draws comparison to the myth of Deianira told in Sophocles' Women of Trachis.
  As women were not allowed to represent themselves in court in classical Athens, the stepmother seems to have been represented by her sons.  The speech for the defence does not survive, but it may have argued that the stepmother had not intended to kill her husband, merely to give him a love potion.  The Magna Moralia discusses a similar case where a woman was acquitted based on the defence that she was not trying to kill her husband, but was acting out of love.
  The charge, brought many years after the event, may have been motivated by a dispute over inheritance. 
  As with most surviving Athenian legal speeches, the outcome of the case is unknown.  Scholars have generally considered the prosecution case to be extremely weak.  Patricia A. Watson notes that the speaker fails to explain the stepmother's motive in poisoning her husband.  However, Michael Gagarin argues that while the evidence provided by the prosecution is weak, the story told is nonetheless effective, and might still have resulted in a successful prosecution.  On the other hand, Wohl suggests that this strategy might have backfired if the tragic allusions in Antiphon's speech instead brought to mind a more sympathetic character, such as Deianira.
caption: Antiphon's speech compares the plaintiff's stepmother to Clytemnestra, and his murdered father to Agamemnon, shown in this painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.
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