The Lives of the Ten Orators (intro-4)

At some time in the second century before Christ ten Attic orators were selected, probably by Apollodorus of Pergamum, as the orators whose speeches were most worthy of preservation and study, and this Canon of the Ten Attic Orators was generally accepted. The Lives of these orators which are contained in manuscripts of Plutarch’s Moralia were certainly not written by Plutarch. They are altogether lacking in the charm which characterizes Plutarch’s careful and elaborate style. Facts are stated one after another with little variety and with little or no distinction between mere anecdotes and matters of real importance; but the Lives are of interest on account of their subject matter.

The decrees appended to the Lives are, except in some details, fairly accurate copies of official documents (see F. Ladek, Wiener Studien, xiii., 1891, pp. Ill ff.). The two which are concerned with Demosthenes and his family are not really decrees, but petitions addressed to the Senate, copies of which were undoubtedly kept among the official records at Athens, whereas the third - that in honour of Lycurgus - is a decree of the people. A large part of the inscription recording this decree has been found and is published in the Inscriptiones Graecae, ii. No. 240 (editio minor, ii. No. 457), Dittenberger,

Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, third edition, No. 326. The text which has been handed down in the manuscripts of Plutarch varies somewhat from that of the inscription, but hardly more than is to be expected. It may well be that whoever appended the decrees to the Lives of the orators derived them, not directly from inscriptions or other official documents, but (as suggested by B. Keil in Hermes, xxx. pp. 210 ff.) from the work of Heliodorus On Monuments.

The Lives, with the decrees, are published by Anton Westermann in his Biographi Graeci (1833 and 1845).

Antiphon was the son of Sophilus, and his deme was Rhamnus. He was a pupil of his father (for his father was a sophist, and it is said that Alcibiades as a boy attended his school), and having acquired power in speaking - as some think, through his own natural ability - he entered upon a public career. And he set up a school and had his disagreement with Socrates on the subject of words, not in a contentious spirit, but for the sake of argument, as Xenophon has narrated in his Memoirs.[*] And he wrote some speeches for citizens who wanted them for their suits in the law-courts, being the first who practised this profession, as some say. At any rate no legal oration is extant of any of those who lived before his time, nor of his contemporaries either, because the custom of speech-writing had not yet arisen; there is none by Themistocles, Aristeides, or Pericles, although the times afforded them many opportunities and also occasions when such speeches were needed. And it was not for lack of ability that they refrained from such speech-writing, as is evident from what is said by the historians about each of the abovementioned orators. Yet all those whom we are able to record as having practised this kind of speeches, going back to the earliest occurrence, will be found

to have followed Antiphon when he was already old; I mean such as Alcibiades, Critias, Lysias, and Archinus. He was also the first to publish rules of the art of oratory, being of sharp intellect, and for this reason he was nicknamed Nestor.

And Caecilius, in the treatise he compiled about him, conjectures from the terms in which Antiphon is praised in the work of the historian Thucydides that he was the latter’s teacher.[*] In his speeches he is accurate and persuasive, clever in invention, ingenious in handling perplexing cases; he attacks unexpectedly, and he addresses his arguments to both the laws and the emotions, aiming especially at propriety. He was born at the time of the Persian wars and of the sophist Gorgias, who was somewhat older than he; and his life extended until the destruction of the democracy by the Four Hundred,[*] in causing which he seems himself to have had a part, at one time by being trierarch[*] of two ships, at another by being general[*] and gaining many victories in battle and winning important alliances for the Four Hundred, by arming the men of military age,

by manning sixty triremes, and by being on every occasion their envoy to Lacedaemon at the time when Eëtioneia had been fortified.[*] And after the overthrow of the Four Hundred he was indicted along with Archeptolemus, one of the Four Hundred, was found guilty, subjected to the punishments prescribed for traitors, thrown out unburied, and inscribed along with his descendants in the list of the disfranchised. But some tell us that he was put to death by the Thirty,[*] as Lysias says in his speech in defence of Antiphon’s daughter; for he had a daughter whom Callaeschrus claimed in marriage by legal process. And that he was put to death by the Thirty is told also by Theopompus in the fifteenth book of his Philippics [*]; but that must have been another Antiphon, the son of Lysidonides, whom Cratinus also, in his play The Flask, mentions as a rascal; for how could a man who had died previously and had been put to death by the Four Hundred be living again in the time of the Thirty? But there is also another story of his death: that he sailed as envoy to Syracuse when the tyranny of Dionysius the First was at its height, and at a convivial gathering the question arose what bronze was the best; then when most of the guests disagreed, he said that bronze was the best from which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton were made; and when Dionysius heard this, suspecting that the remark was intended to encourage an attack upon himself, he ordered that Antiphon be put to death. But others say that he was angry because Antiphon made fun of his tragedies.

There are current sixty orations ascribed to this orator, twenty-five of which Caecilius says are spurious. He is ridiculed as a lover of money by Plato in his Peisander.[*] And he is said to have written tragedies both by himself and in collaboration with the tyrant Dionysius. But while he was still busy with poetry he invented a method of curing distress, just as physicians have a treatment for those who are ill; and at Corinth, fitting up a room near the market-place, he wrote on the door that he could cure by words those who were in distress; and by asking questions and finding out the causes of their condition he consoled those in trouble. But thinking this art was unworthy of him he turned to oratory. There are some who ascribe also to Antiphon the book On Poets by Glaucus of Rhegium.[*] His most admired orations are the one concerning Herodes, that against Erasistratus about the peacocks, that on the Indictment, which he wrote in his own defence, and that against the general Demosthenes for moving an illegal measure. He wrote also a speech against the general Hippocrates and caused him to be convicted by default.

Caecilius has appended a decree passed in the archonship of Theopompus,[*] the year in which the

Four Hundred were overthrown, according to which the senate voted the trial of Antiphon:

Voted by the senate on the twenty-first day of the prytany. Demonicus of Alopecê was secretary, Philostratus of Pallenê was president. Andron moved in regard to the men whom the generals denounce for acting to the detriment of the State of the Athenians while serving as envoys to Lacedaemon and for sailing from the camp in a ship of the enemy and for having passed by land through Deceleia, namely Archeptolemus, Onomacles, and Antiphon, that they be arrested and brought before the court for trial. And the generals, with those members of the senate whom they shall co-opt to the number of ten, are directed to produce them in court, that they may be present at the trial. And the Thesmothetae[*] shall summon them to-morrow, and when the summonses have been returned to the court, they shall propose that the chosen prosecutors and the generals and others, if anyone so desire, shall accuse them of treason; and whomsoever the court may convict, he shall be treated in accordance with the law which has been passed relating to traitors.

Under this enactment the judgement is written:

Archeptolemus, son of Hippodamus, of Agryle, and Antiphon, son of Sophilus, of Rhamnus, both being present, were found guilty of treason. The sentence passed upon them was that they be handed over to the Eleven for execution, that their belongings be confiscated and ten per cent thereof be given to the Goddess, that their houses be torn down and boundary-stones be set up on their sites with the inscription Land of Archeptolemus and Antiphon the two traitors; and that the two demarchs make a declaration of their

property; and that it be forbidden to bury Archeptolemus and Antiphon at Athens or in any place ruled by the Athenians; and that Archeptolemus and Antiphon be attainted, and also their descendants legitimate and illegitimate; and that if anyone shall adopt any descendant of Archeptolemus or Antiphon, he who so adopts shall be attainted; and that this be inscribed on a bronze tablet, which shall be set up where the decrees relating to Phrynichus are placed.

Andocides was the son of Leogoras, son of that Andocides who once made peace between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians[*]; he was as regards his deme a Cydathenian or a Thorian[*] and was descended from nobles, and even, according to Hellanicus,[*] from Hermes; for the race of heralds traces its origin to him. On this account, too, he was once chosen along with Glaucon to go with twenty ships to aid the Corcyraeans who were embroiled with the Corinthians.[*] And after this he was accused of impiety as being one of those who mutilated the Hermae[*] and as profaning the mysteries of Demeter [because at an earlier time he was

dissipated and in a nocturnal revel had broken one of the images of the god, and when he was indicted refused to surrender the slave whom his accusers were looking for, so that he gained a bad name and was suspected and accused in the second suit also, which was brought shortly after the expedition went to Sicily, when the Corinthians sent in men from Leontini and Egesta and, as the Athenians hesitated about aiding them privately, they mutilated the Hermae about the market-place, as Cratippus says, and profaned the mysteries besides]. At his trial on these charges he was acquitted on condition that he should inform against the wrongdoers. He exerted himself greatly and discovered those who were guilty of the sacrilege, among whom he informed against his own father. And he brought about the conviction and death of all the others, but saved his father, although he had already been put in prison, by promising that he would be of great service to the city. And he kept his promise; for Leogoras caused the conviction of many men who were embezzling public funds and committing other misdeeds. And for these reasons he was acquitted of the charge.

But Andocides, since his reputation in public life was not good, took to merchandising and became a friend of the Cypriote kings and many other men of note, at which time he abducted a girl of Athenian birth, daughter of Aristeides and his own niece, without the knowledge of her family, and sent her as

a gift to the King of Cyprus. Then, when he was to be brought to trial for this, he stole her back again from Cyprus and was caught and put in prison by the king; but he ran away and came back to Athens at the time when the Four Hundred were in control of affairs. He was put in prison by them, but escaped, and again, when the oligarchy was overthrown, he ⋯ was banished from the city after the Thirty had taken over the government. He spent the period of his exile in Elis, but when Thrasybulus and his band returned,[*] he also returned to the city. He was sent to Lacedaemon to negotiate a peace, but was suspected of wrongdoing[*] and banished. He gives information about all this in the speeches which he wrote; for some of them he composed in his defence in the matter of the mysteries, and others when he was asking to be allowed to return home. There is also extant his speech On the Indictment, also the Defence against Phaeax and the speech On the Peace. He flourished at the same time as Socrates the philosopher; the date of his birth was the seventy-eighth Olympiad, when Theogenides was archon[*] at Athens, so that he was about ten years older[*] than Lysias. The Hermes called the Hermes of Andocides is named after him. It is a dedication of the tribe Aegeis and is called Hermes of Andocides because Andocides lived near it. He himself supplied the chorus for his tribe[*] when it was competing in a dithyrambic contest, and he gained the victory, for which he set up a tripod on a high spot opposite the limestone Silenus. He is simple and free from artifice in his orations, plain and employing no figures of speech.

Lysias was the son of Cephalus, grandson of Lysanias, and great-grandson of Cephalus. His father was by birth a Syracusan but moved to Athens because he wished to live in that city and also because Pericles, son of Xanthippus, persuaded him to do so, as he was a personal friend of Pericles and they were connected by ties of hospitality, and he was a man of great wealth. But some say that he moved because he was banished from Syracuse when Gelo was tyrant. Lysias was born at Athens in the archonship of the Philocles[*] who succeeded Phrasicles,[*] in the second year of the eightieth Olympiad, and at first he was a schoolmate of the most prominent Athenians; but when the city sent the colony to Sybaris, which was afterwards renamed Thurii, he went out with his eldest brother Polemarchus (for he had two others,

Euthydemus and Brachyllus), their father being already dead, to share in the allotment of land.[*] This was in the archonship of Praxiteles,[*] and he was then fifteen years old. He remained there, was instructed by the Syracusans Teisias and Nicias, acquired a house, had a share of the allotment, and was a citizen for thirty-three years, until Cleocritus was archon at Athens.[*] But in the next year, when Callias was archon,[*] in the ninety-second Olympiad, when the misfortunes in Sicily[*] had happened to the Athenians and unrest had arisen among the allies in general and especially those who dwelt in Italy, he was accused of favouring Athens and, with three hundred others, was banished. Arriving at Athens in the archonship of the Callias[*] who succeeded Cleocritus, when the Four Hundred already had possession of the city,[*] he remained there. But when the battle of Aegospotami[*] had taken place and the Thirty had taken possession of the city,[*] he was banished after having been there seven years. He was deprived of his property and lost his brother Polemarchus, but he himself escaped from the house in which he was kept to be executed (for it had two doors)[*] and lived at Megara. But when the men at Phyle[*] set about their return to Athens, he was seen to be more helpful than anyone else, since he supplied two thousand drachmas and two hundred shields and, when sent with Hermas, hired three hundred mercenaries and persuaded Thrasydaeus of Elis, who had become his guest-friend, to give two talents. For these services Thrasybulus, after the restoration of the exiles to the city and in the period of anarchy[*] before Eucleides, proposed a grant of citizenship for him, and the popular assembly ratified the grant, but when Archinus had him up for illegality because it had not been previously voted by the senate,[*] the enactment was declared void. And after losing his citizenship in this way, he lived the rest of his life at Athens with all the rights of citizenship except the vote and eligibility to office, and died there at the age of eightythree years or, as some say, seventy-six or, as others say, over eighty; and he lived to see Demosthenes as a youth. They say he was born in the archonship of Philocles.

Four hundred and twenty-five orations attributed to him are current. Of these Dionysius and Caecilius and their school say that two hundred and thirtythree are genuine, and he is said to have lost his case with only two of them. There is also his speech in support of the enactment against which Archinus brought suit and deprived him of citizenship, and another against the Thirty. He was very persuasive and concise and produced most of his speeches for private clients. There are also Textbooks of Rhetoric prepared by him, and Public Addresses, Letters and Eulogies, Funeral Speeches, Love Speeches, and a Defence of Socrates addressed to the judges.[*] In the matter of his diction he appears to be easy, although in fact he is hard to imitate.[*] Demosthenes in his speech against Neaera[*] says that he was in love with Metaneira, a fellow-slave with Neaera; but later he married the daughter of his brother Brachyllus. Plato also mentions him in the Phaedrus [*] as an able speaker and older than Isocrates. Moreover Philiscus, a pupil of Isocrates and comrade of

Lysias, composed an elegiac poem to him, from which it is plain that he was earlier in years, which is indicated also by what Plato said. The verses are as follows:

Now, O Calliope’s daughter endowed with great eloquence, Phrontis,

Show if thy wisdom is aught, if thou hast anything new.

Him who is altered and changed to another form, him who in other

Orders and manners of life hath a new body assumed,

Thou must bring forth some herald of virtue to celebrate: Lysis[*]

Gone to the dead and the gloom, there an immortal to dwell;

One who will show unto all the love of my soul for my comrade,

Show, too, the worth of the dead unto the whole of mankind.[*]

He also wrote two speeches for Iphicrates, one against Harmodius, the other for use in accusing Timotheüs of treason, with both of which he won his case; but when Iphicrates accepted the responsibility for the actions of Timotheüs,[*] assuming at the rendering of accounts the accusation for treason, he defended himself with the speech by Lysias; and he himself was acquitted, but Timotheüs was very heavily fined. And at the Olympic festival also he read a very great oration urging that the Greeks make peace with one another and overthrow Dionysius.[*]

Isocrates was the son of Theodorus of Erchia, a citizen of the middle class, an owner of slaves who made flutes, through whom he gained a competence, so that he paid for a public chorus[*] and gave his children an education[*] (for he had other sons, Telesippus and Diomnestus, and also a daughter), and hence he is ridiculed on account of the flutes by Aristophanes and Strattis. Isocrates was born in the eighty-sixth Olympiad, in the archonship of Lysimachus[*] of Myrrhinus, being twenty-two years younger than Lysias and seven years older than Plato.[*] In his boyhood he was as well educated as any Athenian, for he attended the lectures of Prodicus of Ceos, Gorgias of Leontini, Teisias of Syracuse, and the orator Theramenes; and when the lastnamed was in danger of being arrested by the Thirty and had fled for safety to the altar of Hestia Boulaea,[*] everyone else was terrified, but Isocrates alone arose to speak in his aid; and at first he was silent for a long time, then afterwards he was urged to be silent by Theramenes himself, who said that his misfortune would be more painful if any of his friends should share it. And it is said that certain rhetorical teachings of Theramenes - those which go under the name of Boton - were of use to Isocrates when he was

falsely accused in the courts. But when he became a man he kept away from political affairs, since he had a weak voice and a timid disposition[*] and had lost his inherited property in the war against the Lacedaemonians. It is evident that he composed speeches for others, but he delivered only one, that on the Exchange of Property. He set up a school and turned to philosophy and to writing out the results of his thinking, and he composed his Festival Oration[*] and some others of an advisory nature, some of which he delivered himself and some of which he prepared for others to deliver, hoping that in this way he might lead the Greeks to think as they ought. But when he failed of his purpose he gave up that sort of thing and became the head of a school, at first, as some say, at Chios, where he had nine pupils. That was the time when, as he saw the tuition fees counted out, he burst into tears and said, Now I recognize that I have sold myself to these people. He would carry on conversation with all who desired it and was the first to make a distinction between contentious speeches and those of a political character, to which latter he devoted himself. And he also instituted at Chios public offices and the same constitution which existed in his native city. He made more money than any other sophist, so that he was even a trierarch.[*]

His pupils numbered about one hundred, including among many others Timotheüs, son of Conon, with

whom he visited many cities; and he composed the letters which Timotheüs sent to the Athenians, on account of which Timotheüs presented him with a talent out of the sum remaining after the relief of Samos.[*] Pupils of his were also Theopompus[*] of Chios, Ephorus of Cumae, Asclepiades who compiled the arguments of tragedies, and Theodectas of Phaselis, who afterwards wrote tragedies and whose monument stood as you go to the Bean-market along the Sacred Way which leads to Eleusis; it is now in ruins. There, too, were set up statues of the famous poets along with his; of these only the poet Homer exists now. And Leodamas the Athenian and Lacritus the Athenian law-maker and, as some say, Hypereides and Isaeus were his pupils. And they say that while he was still teaching oratory Demosthenes came to him eager to learn and said that he could not pay the thousand drachmas which he asked as tuition fee, but would give two hundred for one fifth of the instruction; whereupon Isocrates replied: We do not cut our instruction into bits, Demosthenes, but just as people sell fine fish whole, so, if you wish to be my pupil, I will sell you my course whole.

He died in the archonship of Chaerondas[*] after hearing in the palaestra of Hippocrates the news of

the battle of Chaeroneia;[*] and he removed himself from life by abstaining from food for four days. Just before the end he declaimed the opening lines of three dramas of Euripides:

Danaüs of fifty daughters fair the sire,[*]

Pelops the Tantalid to Pisa came,[*]

Once Sidon’s city Cadmus having left.[*]

He died at the age of ninety-eight or, as some say, one hundred years, for he could not endure the sight of Greece enslaved four times.[*] A year (or, as some say, four years) before his end he wrote the Panathenaic Oration;[*] and for the composition of the Festival Oration he took ten (but some say fifteen) years. This, they say, he derived from the speeches of Gorgias of Leontini and Lysias. The speech on the Exchange of Property[*] he wrote at the age of eighty-two years, and those against Philip shortly before his death. When he was an old man he adopted Aphareus, the youngest of the three sons of Plathanê, daughter of the orator Hippias. He acquired ample wealth, for he not only collected money from his pupils, but he also received from Nicocles, king of Cyprus, who was the son of Evagoras, twenty talents for the oration written in his honour. On account of his wealth he was envied and was proposed three times as trierarch. Twice he alleged illness and was exempted by petitions presented by his son, but the third time he undertook the duty and spent no small sum. To a father who said that he gave his son only a slave as companion he said, Go your ways, then, for you will have two slaves instead of one. He took part also in the competition offered by Artemisia in honour of Maussolus,[*] but his Eulogy is not extant. He wrote also a Eulogy of Helen and a speech called the Areopagitic. He departed this life some say on the ninth day of his abstention from food, others on the fourth day at the time of the funeral of those who fell at Chaeroneia. His son Aphareus also wrote speeches. Isocrates was buried with his family near Cynosarges[*] on the left side of the hill-he himself, his father Theodorus, and his mother; and her sister Anaco, the orator’s aunt, and his adopted son Aphareus, and his cousin Socrates, son of Anaco Isocrates’ mother’s sister, and his brother Theodorus who had the same name as his father, and his grandsons, the sons of his adopted son Aphareus, Aphareus and his father Theodorus, and the latter’s wife Plathanê, mother of the adopted son Aphareus. And over them there were six tablets which do not now exist. On the monument of Isocrates himself was a column thirty cubits high, on which was a siren seven cubits high as a symbol; but this exists no longer. There was also a tablet near by with poets and his instructors on it, among whom was Gorgias gazing into an astrological sphere and Isocrates standing beside him. There is also a bronze statue of him, dedicated by Timotheüs, son of Conon, at Eleusis in front of the vestibule. It bears this inscription:

Here to the goddesses twain Timotheüs giveth this statue

Tribute to friend and to sage, image of Isocrates.

It is a work of Leochares.

Sixty orations are current under his name, of which twenty-five are genuine according to Dionysius, twenty-eight according to Caecilius, and the rest are spurious. He was averse to public declamation, so much so that once, when three persons came to hear him, he retained two but let the third go, telling him to come the next day, since now the lecture-room had a full audience. And he used to say to his pupils that he himself gave instruction for ten minas, but would give ten thousand to anyone who would teach him self-confidence and a pleasant voice. And when he

was asked how he, not being a good speaker himself, could make others so, he replied that whetstones cannot themselves cut, but make iron fit to do so. Some say that he also wrote textbooks of oratory, others that in his teaching he made use of practice, not of method. He never demanded a fee from a fellow-citizen. When his pupils went to meetings of the assembly, he told them to report to him what was said there. He was greatly grieved by the death of Socrates, and the next day he appeared in black clothing. And again, when someone asked him What is oratory? he said, the art of making small things great and great things small. And once when he was a guest at a banquet in the house of Nicocreon, despot of Cyprus, and some of those present urged him to discourse, he said, for subjects in which I am competent this is not the time; in the subjects for which this is the time I am not competent. [*] When he saw the tragic poet Sophocles amorously following a boy, he said, Sophocles, we must not only keep our hands to ourselves, but our eyes as well. [*] And when Ephorus of Cumae had left his school without learning anything and had been sent back by his father with a second tuition-fee, he called him in fun Diphorus (Twice-bringer); he took, however, great pains with him and even suggested to him the subject of his work.[*] He showred himself also prone to sexual indulgence; he used an additional mattress beside him on his bed and kept his pillow wet with saffron. And when he was young he did not marry, but in his old age he kept a mistress named Lagiscê, by whom he had a daughter who died unmarried at twelve years of age. Then he married the daughter of the orator Hippias, Plathanê, who had three sons, one of whom, Aphareus, as has been said above, he adopted. This Aphareus dedicated a bronze statue of him near the Olympieium on a column with the inscription:

Aphareus set up this statue his father Isocrates’ image,

Sacred to Zeus, to exalt gods and his ancestors’ worth.[*]

And it is said that he rode a horse in a race when he was still a boy; for a bronze figure of him as a boy riding a horse is set up on the Acropolis in the ballground of the Arrhephoroi,[*] as some have said. In all his life but two lawsuits were brought against him: first when Megacleides challenged him to an exchange of property.[*] He did not appear in court in this suit, because he was ill, but sent his son Aphareus and won his case. The second suit was when Lysimachus challenged him to exchange property in connexion with the trierarchy; and this case he lost and performed the trierarchy. There was also a painted portrait of him in the Pompeium.[*] Aphareus wrote speeches, both juridical and deliberative, but not many. He also composed about thirty-seven tragedies, but the authorship of tw o of them is contested. Beginning in the archonship of Lysistratus[*] he presented in the twenty-eight years to the archonship of Sosigenes[*] six series of dramas at the City Dionysia and won the prize twice, Dionysius as his manager,[*] and, other poets managing, he presented two other series at the Lenaean festival.[*] There were statues of the mother of Isocrates and Theodorus and of her sister Anaco set up on the Acropolis; of these the statue of the mother is now placed, with a changed inscription,[*] near that of Hygieia, but the statue of Anaco is gone. She had two sons, Alexander by Coenus, and Sosicles by Lysias.