Author Lysias

he inference that the Sicilian family were well known to Plato, and that their houses must often have been hospitable to such gatherings. At Thurii, the colony newly planted on the Tarentine Gulf, the boy may have seen Herodotus, now a man in middle life, and a friendship may have grown up between them. There, too, Lysias is said to have commenced his studies in rhetoric—doubtless under a master of the Sicilian school possibly, as tradition said, under Tisias, the pupil of Corax, whose name is associated with the first attempt to formulate rhetoric as an art. In 413 BC the Athenian armament in Sicily was annihilated. The desire to link famous names is illustrated by the ancient ascription to Lysias of a rhetorical exercise purporting to be a speech in which the captive general Nicias appealed for mercy to the Sicilians. The terrible blow to Athens quickened the energies of an anti-Athenian faction at Thurii. Lysias and his elder brother Polemarchus, with three hundred other persons, were accused of Atticizing. They were driven from Thurii and settled at Athens (412 BC). Lysias and Polemarchus were rich men, having inherited property from their father; and Lysias claims that, though merely resident aliens, they discharged public services with a liberality which shamed many of those who enjoyed the franchise (Against Eratosthenes xii.20). The fact that they owned house property shows that they were classed as isoteleis (?????????), i.e. foreigners who paid only the same tax as citizens, being exempt from the special tax (?????????) on resident aliens. Polemarchus occupied a house in Athens itself, Lysias another in the Piraeus, near which was their shield manufactory, employing a hundred and twenty skilled slaves. In 404 the Thirty Tyrants were established at Athens under the protection of a Spartan garrison. One of their earliest measures was an attack upon the resident aliens, who were represented as disaffected to the new government. Lysias and Polemarchus were on a list of ten singled out to be the first victims. Polemarchus was arrested, and compelled to drink hemlock. Lysias had a narrow escape, with the help of a large bribe. He slipped by a back-door out of the house in which he was a prisoner, and took boat to Megara. It appears that he had rendered valuable services to the exiles during the reign of the tyrants, and in 403 Thrasybulus proposed that these services should be recognized by the bestowal of the citizenship. The Boule, however, had not yet been reconstituted, and hence the measure could not be introduced to the ecclesia by the requisite preliminary resolution (probouleuma). On this ground it was successfully opposed. The Athenian political climate during Lysias’s life cannot be looked upon in modern terms. Modern politics means constant and open competition between organized rival factions with their own ideologies and memberships. The members of these parties label themselves a certain name which implies that they will vote and pay dues to a certain organization who share the same basic social and political outlooks on society. The terms that best render political opposites at the time were “Oligarch” and “Democratic.” Politics as described by Lysias meant that “no human being is by nature oligarchical or democratic, but whatever constitution brings advantage to an individual is the one he would like to see established.” This passage illustrates that whatever ideology a person chose to support is not based on their core beliefs or principles. Overall, two of the key terms of Athenian politics were popular participation and collective rule. Every male Athenian citizen, irrespective to birth, occupation, and with a few exceptions, economic status, had the right to wield power as an official or Council member and actively participate in the decision-making process at the Assembly whether or not he currently held any official position. Voting was egalitarian—‘one man, one vote’—and because Athens was a direct democracy, voting outcomes remained relatively unpredictable. A Greek person was likely to support one or the other at any given time based on specific economic and social cases.[2] [3] During his later years Lysias—now probably a comparatively poor man owing to the rapacity of the tyrants and his own generosity to the Athenian exiles—appears as a hard-working member of a new profession—that of logographer, writer of speeches to be delivered in the law-courts. The thirty-four extant are but a small fraction. From 403 to about 380 BC his industry must have been incessant. The notices of his personal life in these years are scanty. In 403 he came forward as the accuser of Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants. This was his only direct contact with Athenian politics. The story that he wrote a defence for Socrates, which the latter declined to use, probably arose from a confusion. Several years after the death of Socrates the sophist Polycrates composed a declamation against him, to which Lysias replied. Though already in his early fifties, Lysias fell in love with a young man from Platea, by the name of Theodotus. The youth, however, had already signed a companionship contract with a certain Simon, who, claiming prior rights to the boy, proceeded to stalk him, resorting to several kidnapping attempts. As a result of that, and the street brawls which ensued over Lysias' eromenos, the case was heard before the Areopagus.[4][5] A more authentic tradition represents Lysias as having spoken his own Olympiacus at the Olympic festival of 388 BC, to which Dionysius I of Syracuse had sent a magnificent embassy. Tents embroidered with gold were pitched within the sacred enclosure; and the wealth of Dionysius was vividly shown by the number of chariots which he had entered. Lysias lifted up his voice to denounce Dionysius as, next to Artaxerxes, the worst enemy of Hellas, and to impress upon the assembled Greeks that one of their foremost duties was to deliver Sicily from a hateful oppression. The latest work of Lysias which we can date (a fragment of a speech For Pherenicus) belongs to 381 or 380 BC. He probably died in or soon after 380 BC. Lysias displays literary tact, humour, and attention to character in his extant speeches, and is famous for using his skill to conceal his art. It was obviously desirable that a speech written for delivery by a client should be suitable to his age, station and circumstances. Lysias was the first to make this adaptation really artistic. His language is crafted to flow easily, in contrast to his predecessor Antiphon's pursuit of majestic emphasis, to his pupil (and close follower in many respects) Isaeus' more conspicuous display of artistry and more strictly logical manner of argumentation,[6] and later to the forceful oratory of Demosthenes. Translated into terms of ancient criticism, he became the model of the plain style (?????? ????????, ?????, ????, ?????? ?????: genus tenue or subtile). Greek and then Roman critics distinguished three styles of rhetorical composition--the grand (or elaborate), the plain and the middle, the plain being nearest to the language of daily life. Greek rhetoric began in the grand style; then Lysias set an exquisite pattern of the plain; and Demosthenes might be considered as having effected an almost ideal compromise. The vocabulary of Lysias is relatively simple and would later be regarded as a model of pure diction for Atticists. Most of the rhetorical figures are sparingly used--except such as consist in the parallelism or opposition of clauses. The taste of the day not yet emancipated from the influence of the Sicilian rhetoric probably demanded a large use of antithesis. Lysias excels in vivid description; he has also the knack of marking the speakers character by light touches. The structure of his sentences varies a good deal according to the dignity of the subject. He has equal command over the periodic style (katestrammen? lexis) and the non-periodic or continuous (eiromen?, dialelumen?). His disposition of his subject-matter is always simple. The speech has usually four parts: introduction (prooimion), narrative of facts (di?g?sis), proofs (pisteis), which may be either external, as from witnesses, or internal, derived from argument on the facts, and, lastly, conclusion (epilogos). It is in the introduction and the narrative that Lysias is seen at his best. In his greatest extant speech—that Against Eratosthenes—and also in the fragmentary Olympiacus, he has pathos and fire; but these were not characteristic qualities of his work. In Cicero's judgment (De Orat. iii. 7, 28) Demosthenes was peculiarly distinguished by force (vis), Aeschines by resonance (sonitus); Hypereides by acuteness (acumen); Isocrates by sweetness (suavitas); the distinction which he assigns to Lysias is subtilitas, an Attic refinement—which, as he elsewhere says (Brutus, 16, 64) is often joined to an admirable vigour (lacerti). Nor was it oratory alone to which Lysias rendered service; his work had an important effect on all subsequent Greek prose, by showing how perfect elegance could be joined to plainness. Here, in his artistic use of familiar idiom, he might fairly be called the Euripides of Attic prose. His style has attracted interest from modern readers, because it is employed in describing scenes from the everyday life of Athens.