page_title: Sophistic works of Antiphon
section_title: Antiphon the Sophist
hierarchical_section_title: Sophistic works of Antiphon / Antiphon the Sophist
caption_attribution_description: English: A 3rd century CE papyrus attributed to Antiphon' Peri aletheias Bk. I
context_page_description: The name Antiphon the Sophist is used to refer to the writer of several Sophistic treatises. He probably lived in Athens in the last two decades of the 5th century BC, but almost nothing is known of his life.
  It has been debated since antiquity whether the writer of these Sophistic treatises was in fact none other than Antiphon the Orator, or whether Antiphon the Sophist was indeed a separate person. This remains an active scholarly controversy; of recent editors, Gagarin, and Laks and Most, believe there to be only one Antiphon, whereas G. J. Pendrick argues for the existence of two separate individuals.
  The most important of these treatises was On Truth, whose surviving fragments cover many different subjects, from astronomy and mathematics to morality and ethics. Fragments have also been preserved of the treatises On Concord and Politicus; these fragments have sometimes been attributed to the Orator rather than to the Sophist.
  It is also not known for certain whether the treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams under the name of Antiphon was written by Antiphon the Sophist, or whether this was written by yet another different Antiphon.
context_section_description: A treatise known as On Truth, of which only fragments survive, is attributed to Antiphon the Sophist.  It is of great value to political theory, as it appears to be a precursor to natural rights theory.  The views expressed in it suggest its author could not be the same person as Antiphon of Rhamnus, since it was interpreted as affirming strong egalitarian and libertarian principles appropriate to a democracy — but antithetical to the oligarchical views of one who was instrumental in the anti-democratic coup of 411 like Antiphon of Rhamnus.  It's been argued that that interpretation has become obsolete in light of a new fragment of text from On Truth discovered in 1984.  New evidence supposedly rules out an egalitarian interpretation of the text.
  The following passages may confirm the strongly libertarian commitments of Antiphon the Sophist.
caption: A third-century AD papyrus attributed to the first book of On Truth (P.Oxy. XI 1364 fr. 1, cols. v–vii)
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