INTRODUCTION 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). I. ANTIPHON 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 . Xenophon, Memorabilia , i. 6. 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. Cf. Thucydides, viii. 68 ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναίων τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτόν ἀρετῇ τε οὐδενὸς δεύτερος καὶ κπάτιστος ἐνθυμηθῆναι γενόμενος καὶ ἃ γνοίη εἰπεῖν , a man inferior to none of the Athenians of his own day in force of character, and one who had proved himself most able both to formulate a plan and to set forth his conclusions in speech (Smith’s translation, L.C.L.). 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 411 b.c. when for some four months an oligarchy ruled Athens. in causing which he seems himself to have had a part, at one time by being trierarch The duty of fitting out ships for the navy devolved upon wealthy citizens, who were then called trierarchs. of two ships, at another by being general Antiphon was a common name at Athens in the fifth century. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed. i. pp. 93 ff., distinguishes, in addition to the orator: (1) a patriotic and worthy citizen (Xenophon, Hell. ii. 3. 40) in defence of whose daughter Lysias wrote a speech, and to whom the military activities belong which are here ascribed to the orator; (2) the tragic poet who was put to death by Dionysius of Syracuse (Aristotle, Rhet. ii. 6. p. 1385 a 9); (3) Antiphon the sophist (Xenophon, Mem. i. 6. 5; Diog. Laert. ii. 5. 25), who is probably the one who practised mental healing at Corinth; (4) the son of Pyrilampus (Plato, Parmenides , 127 a); (5) the son of Lysonides ( Moralia , 833 a); and (6) an Antiphon derided by Aristophanes ( Wasps , 1270), as a starveling. The Pseudo-Plutarch has evidently fused several of these personalities with that of the orator. 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. Eëtioneia, the mole which formed the northern side of the great Harbour of Peiraeus, was fortified by the Four Hundred in order to command the entrance. 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, In 404 b.c., when Athens was occupied by the Lacedaemonians, a body of Thirty men was appointed to revise the constitution. They seized all power and ruled ruthlessly until overthrown in May 403 b.c. 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 Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. i. p. 300. ; 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 . Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 629, no. 103. 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. Cf. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. ii. p. 23. 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, 411-410 b.c. Caecilius derived his text of the decree from Craterus’s collection of decrees. See Harpocration, s.v. Ἄνδρων and Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed., i. p. 99. 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 Six of the annually elected archons; their duties were to administer the courts of justice. 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. I I. ANDOCIDES Andocides was the son of Leogoras, son of that Andocides who once made peace between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians The Thirty Years’ Peace, by the terms of which Athens gave up Megara and its ports in 446-445 b.c. ; he was as regards his deme a Cydathenian or a Thorian See note d below for the source of this error. and was descended from nobles, and even, according to Hellanicus, Cf. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. i. p. 55, no. 78. 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. Cf. Thucydides, i. 51, who seems to have been the source of this error. The colleague of Glaucon on this expedition was Dracontides, son of Leogoras of Thurae, and not Andocides, who at the time, 433 b.c., was too young. See I. G. i. 295 (ed. min.), and Kirchner, Prosopographia Attica , 828 and 4551. And after this he was accused of impiety as being one of those who mutilated the Hermae The Hermae, square pillars surmounted by the head of the god Hermes, stood before the doors of Athenian houses. In 415 b.c., just as the great expedition against Sicily was about to sail, these Hermae were systematically mutilated in the night by unknown persons. 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, In the summer of 404 b.c. thirty men had been appointed to draw up laws and manage the state temporarily. Thrasybulus seized the hill-fortress of Phylê in December and maintained his position against two attacks by the Thirty. In May 403 Thrasybulus and his followers seized Peiraeus. In September the Thirty were overthrown and the democracy re-established. he also returned to the city. He was sent to Lacedaemon to negotiate a peace, but was suspected of wrongdoing The nature of the accusation cannot be determined. See Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed., pp. 293 ff. The oration On the Peace , delivered between 393 and 390 b.c., deals with the terms proposed by the mission in which Andocides participated. 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 468-467 b.c. This date, however, is based upon a false reckoning, and from the orator’s own statements he could not have been born much before 440. See Blass, ibid. i. p. 283, and Kirchner, Prosop. Att. 828. at Athens, so that he was about ten years older The numeral is an emendation. 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 A decree of the tribe Pandionis in which the orator is named among the victorious choregi is extant, I. G. ii. 1138 (ed. min.); it was with a chorus of boys at the Dionysia. 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. III. LYSIAS 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 459-458 b.c. who succeeded Phrasicles, The archon in 460-459 b.c. was Phrasicleides, not 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. The scene of Plato’s Republic is laid at the house of Cephalus. The dialogue is not historical, and its imagined date cannot be fixed, but it seems to show that Plato knew Cephalus and his sons, see Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed., i. p. 341. This was in the archonship of Praxiteles, 444-443 b.c. 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. 413-412 b.c. The ninety-second Olympiad is the date of the archonship of another Callias, 406-405 b.c. But in the next year, when Callias was archon, The dates given by our author for events in the life of Lysias are consistent (see also 835 a above, and 836 f below, Cf. also Dion. Hal. Isocrates , i.), on the assumption that he went to Thurii when the colony was founded, in 444 b.c. But if that is correct, his activity as a writer of speeches to be delivered in the Athenian courts would not begin until his fifty-seventh year. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed., i. p. 345, after stating the evidence, comes to the conclusion that Lysias was born at Athens probably about 446 b.c., the only certain date being his age (fifteen years), when he went to Thurii, and his treutn to Athens in 413-412 b.c. or the year following. It is quite possible that he did not go to Thurii until some years after the foundation of the colony. The latest of his extant speeches may be dated about 380 b.c., so that we may believe that he died not long after that date. in the ninety-second Olympiad, when the misfortunes in Sicily The great expedition which the Athenians had sent out in 415 b.c. expecting to conquer Sicily was utterly annihilated in the autumn of 413 b.c. 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 412-411 b.c. who succeeded Cleocritus, when the Four Hundred already had possession of the city, Summer of 411 b.c. he remained there. But when the battle of Aegospotami 405 b.c. The Athenian fleet was destroyed by the Lacedaemonians, which virtually ended the Peloponnesian War. had taken place and the Thirty had taken possession of the city, 404 b.c. 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) See Lysias, xii. ( Against Eratosthenes ) 15. and lived at Megara. But when the men at Phyle Thrasybulus and his followers, May 303 b.c. After these exiles seized Periaeus, there was a period of confusion until the democracy was re-established and Eucleides made archon for the year 403-402 b.c. 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 The Athenians termed any period an anarchy in which no archon could be elected because of party strife. 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 Senate or Council of Five Hundred prepared the business for the Popular Assembly, which could not legally vote upon any measure not previously adopted 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. Cicero, De Oratore , i. 231, and Diogenes Laertius, ii. 20, 40, say that Lysias composed an oration in defence of Socrates, and offered it to him, but Socrates refused it. A speech in defence of Socrates ( ὑπερ Σωκράτους πρὸς Πολυκράτην ) is mentioned several times by the scholiast on Aristeides. It was composed probably some years after the death of Socrates, as an epideictic oration in reply to a similar speech against Socrates by the sophist Polycrates. This is doubtless the speech which Cicero and Diogenes wrongly believed to have been composed for use in the actual trial of Socrates. See Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed., i. p. 351. In the matter of his diction he appears to be easy, although in fact he is hard to imitate. Cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ἀρχαίων κρίσις , v. 1 ὡς ἀναγιγνωσκόμενον μὲν εὔκολον νομίζεσυαι χαλεπὸν δὲ εὑρίσκεσθαι ζηλοῦν πειρωμένοις , when read he is considered easy, but is found to be difficult by any who try to imitate him. Demosthenes in his speech against Neaera Demosthenes, Or. lix. 21. 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 Plato, Phaedrus , 279 a. 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 Lysis, because the word Lysias is inadmissible in the Greek metre. Wyttenbach suggests that the verses were really written in honour of Lysis the Pythagorean. 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. Bergk, Poet. Lyr Graec. ii. p. 640. Bergk rightly says that this is only part of a longer poem. The fragment does not indicate that Lysias was older than Isocrates, but some such statement may have been contained in a later part of the poem. 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, In 355 b.c. Iphicrates and Timotheüs, Athenian generals who had been unsuccessful, were accused by their colleague, Chares, of treason. Although Iphicrates accepted full responsibility, he was acquitted, but Timotheüs was fined one hundred talents, which he could not pay. He left Athens and soon died. 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. Only a fragment (Or. xxxiii.) of this is extant. IV. ISOCRATES 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 Wealthy Athenians performed in turn special services to the state called liturgies. The most expensive of these was the choregy, which involved the payment, training, and equipment of a chorus for a lyrical or dramatic performance. and gave his children an education See Isocrates, On the Exchange of Property (Or. xv.), 161. (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 436-435 b.c. of Myrrhinus, being twenty-two years younger than Lysias and seven years older than Plato. Plato was born in 428-427 b.c. Lysias, according to this statement, in 459-458. But see note on 835 d above. 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, The sanctuary of this Goddess of the Senate’s Hearth was in or near the Prytaneum, which was somewhere on the northern slope of the Acropolis. 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 See Isocrates, Philip (Or. v.), 81; Panathenaic (Or. xii.), 9. 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 i.e. the Panegyric , delivered at Olympia. 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. The trierarchy was one of the liturgies which wealthy citizens were obliged to perform. Being trierarch thus showed wealth. 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. 365 b.c. Pupils of his were also Theopompus The text of Photius reads Xenophon the son of Gryllus and 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 338-337 b.c. after hearing in the palaestra of Hippocrates the news of the battle of Chaeroneia; This popular story of Isocrates’ death is given also by Lucian (?), Macrobioi 23, Pausanias, i. 18. 8, and Plutarch, 838 below. It is made famous by Milton in his tenth sonnet: as that dishonest victory At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Killed by report that old man eloquent But Isocrates himself, at the end of his third letter, writes to Philip: But I am grateful to old age for this thing only, that it has continued my life to this point, so that of the things which I meditated in my youth and undertook to write in my Panegyric Oration and in that which I sent to you, I now see some being accomplished through your deeds and hope that others will be accomplished. Apparently he was well pleased with Philip’s success. See Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed., ii. p. 97. 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, From the Archelaüs ; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 427, no. 228. Pelops the Tantalid to Pisa came, Iphigeneia in Tauris , 1. Once Sidon’s city Cadmus having left. From the Phrixus ; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 627, no. 819. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit , 2nd ed., ii. p. 97, thinks these lines enumerate three intrusions of foreigners into Greece. The fourth - not mentioned - would then be that of the Macedonians under Philip. 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. Under the Athenian empire in the fifth century, by the Spartans after the Peloponnesian War, by the Thebans under Epameinondas, and by the Macedonians. All these Isocrates himself had seen. But see note d above. A year (or, as some say, four years) before his end he wrote the Panathenaic Oration; In L.C.L. Isocrates, vol. ii. pp. 368 ff. 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 Ibid. pp. 181 ff. If anyone proposed that a certain man be obliged to perform one of the liturgies which were required of wealthy Athenians, the man of whom this was required could challenge the proposer to an exchange of properties, which might transfer the obligation. 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, Mausolus, ruler of Halicarnassus, died in 353 b.c. His widow, Artemisia, caused eulogies to be written in competition by Greek orators and completed the magnificent tomb which he had, apparently, begun. This magnificent building - the Mausoleum - was designed by Greek architects and decorated by famous Greek sculptors. The remains of the sculpture include portrait statues of Maussolus and Artemisia and are among the most highly prized possessions of the British Museum. 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 Cynosarges was a region in Athens in which was a great gymnasium. 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. cf. Moralia , 613 a. 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. Attributed to Pericles by Plutarch, Life of Pericles , chap. viii., and Cicero, De Officiis , i. 40. 144. 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. The great work of Ephorus was a history of the world (primarily of Greece) from the return of the Heracleidae to the siege of Perinthus in 340 b.c. From this work Plutarch and others derived much of their information. Ephorus was born early in the fourth century and died about 320 b.c. 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. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 329. The column and statue existed in the time of Pausanias (Paus. i. 18. 8). A bust in the Villa Albani in Rome may be a late copy of the head of this statue or, more probably, since Leochares was a famous sculptor, of the statue at Eleusis mentioned above. 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, This seems to have been situated near the north-west wall of the Acropolis, west of the Erechtheum: Cf. Judeich, Topographie von Athen ², p. 283. Two maidens were chosen each year to carry the peplos at the Panathenaic festival and were called Arrephoroi. 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. See note on 837 f. 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. The Pompeium was just inside the Dipylon gate, at which point the processions began. It was the storehouse for objects used in processions. 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 369-368 b.c. he presented in the twenty-eight years to the archonship of Sosigenes 342-341 b.c. six series of dramas at the City Dionysia and won the prize twice, Dionysius as his manager, When a poet ( διδάσκαλος ) wished to avoid the labour of presenting a play he could delegate the management to a hypodidascalus, another poet experienced in such matters. We have many instances of this practice in the didascalic notices, notably in the case of Aristophanes. and, other poets managing, he presented two other series at the Lenaean festival. The City or Greater Dionysia were celebrated in March, the Rural or Lesser Dionysia in the various demes of Attica in December, and the Lenaean festival in December. At all of these dramas were performed, but new tragedies were not produced at the Rural Dionysia, and for a time the same was true of the Lenaean festival. A series of dramas comprised three tragedies and a satyr drama. The two prizes of Aphareus are recorded in an inscription, I.G. ii.² 2325 b (ed. min.). 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, Statues erected to honour one person were not infrequently transferred to another by changing the inscriptions. Dio Chrysostom in his Oration to the Rhodians condemns this practice. near that of Hygieia, but the statue of Anaco is gone. She had two sons, Alexander by Coenus, and Sosicles by Lysias.