of Lysias and his brother Polemarchus. What followed we know from his own indignant narrative. The party of the Tyrants to whom the task fell came with their attendants suddenly to Lysias' house. He, in complete unconsciousness, was entertaining a party of guests, who fled precipitately, leaving Lysias in the hands of the Tyrants. He was committed to the charge of Peison, while the others went to the workshop and took an inventory of the slaves working in it. Lysias was at once fully aware of the desperate nature of his danger and the only means of averting it. He offered Peison a talent to let him go. Peison consented, but followed him when he went to his money chest, and finding there a considerably larger sum, took the whole, but seems to have meant to carry out his bargain as to letting Lysias slip. But as they were leaving the house they met two others of the Thirty, to whom Peison explained that he was on his way to the house of Polemarchus. These two offered to take charge of Lysias, which Peison was afraid to decline. He was accordingly taken for custody to the house of Damnippus, where others arrested in a similar manner were being guarded. Damnippus was a personal friend, and by his connivance Lysias took advantage of a back door, and escaped to the house of a ship captain, Archeneos, where he might be sure of securing some passage. Here he lay hid till he had ascertained that Polemarchus had been arrested and put in prison, and that night he effected his escape to Megara, 21 Here he appears to have remained quietly for some months, and though his property in the Peiræus had been seized, he seems to have still possessed 24 Lysins, v. ll. 40-111. some means, perhaps from money invested in foreign towns, or goods warehoused abroad. For no sooner had the expedition of Thrasybulus to Phylè (Sept. 404 B.C.) given the Democrats new hopes, than he threw himself into their cause with energy, and supported it with liberality. He supplied Thrasybulus with 2000 drachmæ, and persuaded his friend Thrasydæus of Elis, always an opponent of Sparta [Xen. Hell. 3, 2, 2], to give or lend two talents. He supplied 200 shields, and in conjunction with Hermon raised over 300 men.25 Accordingly, when the party of Thrasybulus was triumphant and in possession of Athens, a decree was passed by the ecclesia, on the proposition of Thrasybulus, conferring on him the full Athenian citizenship. The first use which he made of his new privileges was to impeach Eratosthenes, one of the two tyrants who remained in the city, for the murder of his brother Polemarchus. The tyrants had been expressly exempted from the amnesty made between the party of Thrasybulus and the party of the city; but Lysias, if he ever really delivered his speech, seems to have been unsuccessful in obtaining his condemnation, and he himself soon lost the power of conducting an impeachment, which could only be done by a citizen. His enfranchisement had been passed at the end of the so-called year of anarchy, and had not had the previous sanction of the senate, which had not as yet been properly appointed; and when the ordinary constitution was re-established with the beginning of the year of Euclides (i.e. Midsummer 403 B.C.), one Archinus brought in a ypadǹ 25 Vit. X Or. 835. Prof. Mahaffy seems to regard this passage as taken from Lysias orcn speech περὶ τῶν ἰδίων εὐεργεσιῶν, Hist. Gr. Lit. 1, p. 140. It may be so. Taрavóμov against Thrasybulus, and the decree was quashed. 26 Lysias thenceforward had to be content with the status of an Isoteles, the highest grade to which a naturalised resident could attain, and differing from that of a full citizen probably in little except the right of holding offices, of speaking and voting in the ecclesia, and therefore of acting as prosecutor in impeachments.27 But the reputation obtained by his speech delivered against Eratosthenes seems to have put in his way a new means of acquiring wealth-namely, by the exercise of the profession of speech-writer. If the Phædrus of Plato is not wholly dramatic, he appears, in the interval of his residence at Athens before the Revolution, to have acquired some reputation for his compositions, and a supposed essay by him on love forms the text of that dialogue. But his inclination for philosophy or sophistic writings must now be considered as superseded by the more practical and remunerative pursuit. 28 In this his activity must have been very great. The Pseudo-Plutarch asserts that as many as 425 speeches had been attributed to him, of which Dionysius admitted 230 as genuine. It is evident, at any rate, from the quotations of Harpocration, that we have but a small fragment of the work left by him.20 He died in B.C. 378, thus 26 Archinus seems to have made several such charges against Thrasybulus, who, no doubt, in the then unsettled state of things, must have more than once laid himself open to the charge. See Eschines, c. Ctcs., § 195. The irregularity in this case was that the decree was an ἀπροβούλευτον ψήφισμα. Boeckh, pp. 540, 541. Hermann, Pol. Ant. § 116. 28" There is no doubt that some discredit attached to this profession of a Moyoypápos, at least sufficient to deter a man of wealth and good connections from engaging in it."-Dr. Thompson, Phædrus, Introd., p. xxvii. 29 See Appendix iv. Harpocration quotes from some ninety speeches attributed to Lysias. reaching the age of fourscore. Of the twenty-five last years of his life, beyond the fact that they were busily employed in his new profession, we know little or nothing. The Pseudo-Plutarch tells us that he married his niece, the daughter of Brachyllus,30 a connection legal at Athens [see Orat. xvi.]; and there seems to be the ghost of some scandal as to his connection with an hetæra, called by the PseudoDemosthenes (c. Neæram, 1351) Metaneira, and by Athenæus Lagis. 31 On the strength of a passage in one of his speeches (de pecun. Arist. § 19) he has been credited with a joint mission to Dionysius of Syracuse, but his name has probably no right to appear in the text. We cannot doubt, however, that he must have been somewhat more than a mere spectator of the events which from 394 B. C. to the time of his death gradually raised Athens from her degradation to something like her old power on the seas. while engaged in the calling of a speech-writer, does he seem to have forsaken the philosophical studies and friendships of earlier times, for he is said to have composed a defence of Socrates. That his earlier writings had attracted great attention is shown by Plato, who puts into the mouth of Phædrus the description of him as δεινότατος τῶν νῦν γράφειν, while lamenting his turning from the lofty pursuit of philosophy to that of the professional speech-writer: in which passage Plato no doubt puts into the mouth of a contemporary the criticism of a later date. § 2.-WORKS. Nor, The Pseudo-Plutarch mentions three classes of writings left by Lysias: 30 See note 8. 31 Athenæus, xvii. 592 1. (1.) Public speeches, i.e. speeches delivered, or meant to be delivered, in his own person before the ecclesia. Of these he mentions two-(1) A defence of his citizenship against the decree of Archinus.32 (2) A speech against the Thirty, by which he seems to mean the kar' 'Epaтoσ 0évovs. The short time during which Lysias enjoyed, if he may be said to have ever enjoyed, full citizenship accounts for the small number of these speeches. (2.) Speeches written for others in public or in private causes. It was in these that Lysias enjoyed the greatest success and reputation, having only twice, it is said, lost a case. It is not possible to decide even approximately their number. Probably many of those which he composed survived their delivery a very short time. When in subsequent times collections were made of his speeches, many were attri buted to him which he did not compose. As we have seen, of the 425 assigned to him, more than half were rejected by Dionysius. Of this half only thirty-four have survived to our time, and of them no inconsiderable proportion are ousted from their place of honour by modern criticism. (3.) Besides these he composed rhetorical treatises, public addresses, letters, panegyrics, funeral orations, erotics. A specimen of a funeral speech appears as Or. ii. in editions of his works, but its genuineness is denied. Of erotics, the speech in the Phædrus (Plato, Phædr. 230-236) may perhaps be a genuine production of his, or a close imitation of some of his compositions. 32 Perhaps the lost speech περὶ τῶν ἰδίων εὐεργεσιών. |