The Work of Craterus and the Documents in the Attic Orators and in the “Lives of the Ten Orators”

Abstract

Summary This essay is divided into three parts. The first examines the documents about Antiphon in the “Lives of the Ten Orators” (Plut. X orat. 833d–834b), which have been attributed to the collection of Craterus, and shows that they must be forgeries because the information contained in them is inconsistent with reliable sources about Athenian laws and legal procedure and with the language and formulas of the preserved decrees of the fifth century and contains other serious mistakes. The second section examines the fragments of the work of Craterus and shows that all are Athenian decrees, most of which relate to imperial administration or to famous personalities and are dated to the period between roughly 480 and 410. None of the fragments of this work can be dated earlier or later than this period. The third section reviews the documents inserted into the texts of the speeches of Andocides, Aeschines and Demosthenes and shows that in the majority of cases the editors who inserted these documents into the text could not have used the work of Craterus either for the texts of the genuine documents or for the information contained in the forged documents. In the other cases there is no evidence indicating that these editors consulted his work, and it appears that those who composed these documents used other sources.