Against the Stepmother for Poisoning
Oration by 5th-century BC Greek orator Antiphon / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"Against the Stepmother for Poisoning" (Ancient Greek: Φαρμακείας κατὰ τῆς μητρυιᾶς) 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. The speech for the defence, apparently made by the sons of the accused woman, does not survive.
The speech does not provide any evidence for the claims made by the prosecution, but instead attempts to appeal to the emotions of the jurors, drawing a parallel between the stepmother's alleged plot and Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon in Greek mythology. As with most surviving legal speeches from classical Athens, the outcome of the case is unknown. Scholars generally consider the stepson's case to be weak, though some such as Michael Gagarin have argued that the speech might still have resulted in a successful prosecution.