His personal dignity is as remarkable in his manner as in the formalities of style. As we turn back to him from Demosthenes or Aeschines, who lowered the tone of forensic pleading to suit contemporary taste, we are surprised to find that he hardly ever condescends to ridicule, never to scurrilous invective. His judicial adversaries are not necessarily persons of discreditable parentage, immoral character, and infamous occupation. They may perhaps be liars, for one’s own statement of the case must be assumed to contain the whole truth, and consequently the other side must depend on falsehood; but even here the orator is prepared to admit, with almost un-Attic generosity, that his adversaries have been misled and are not acting up to their true character. Take the opening of Tetralogy II. 3: ‘The behaviour of my adversary shows, better than any theory could, that necessity constrains men to speak and act contrary to their better nature. Up to the present he has never spoken shamelessly or acted desperately; but now his misfortunes have constrained him to use language which, knowing him, I should never have expected him to utter.’ Antiphon’s method of constructing his speeches is simple: a conventional preface, of the kind which every rhetorician kept in stock,[63] is followed by an introduction describing and criticizing the circumstances under which the action has been brought.[64] The facts, or a selection of facts of the case, are then narrated,[65] and are followed by arguments and proofs.[66] The evidence of witnesses may be interspersed through the narrative, taken point by point; or, if the narrative is short and simple, all the testimony may be reserved for the end. A peroration,[67] reviewing the situation and containing a final appeal to the court, normally ends the speech. The speeches in the Tetralogies, which are only blank forms composed for practice or as specimens for study, contain only preface, argument, and peroration; there being no actual facts to deal with, there is no introduction or narrative. It is a peculiar weakness of the extant speeches that they rely so much more on arguments from general probability (εἰκότα) than on real pleading on the basis of evidence.[68] Thus the defendant in the _Herodes_ mentions quite casually that he never left the ship on the night when the murder was committed on shore, but he produces no evidence for the _alibi_ and treats it as of quite secondary importance.[69] He insists more on the point that the slave who gave evidence against him was probably induced to bear false witness by the prosecutors. Another piece of evidence against him is the assertion that he wrote a letter to Lycinus, stating that he had committed the murder. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘should I have written a letter, when my messenger would know all the facts?’