118 L Y S I A S successful in commerce, the Attic metoikoi were exposed at such a time to perils like those of the Jews in a mediaeval city, or in modern Russia. Lysias and Polemarchus were on a list of ten singled out to be the first victims. Polemarchus was arrested, and received " the usual message" (TO tiQiv^ivov TrapayyeA/xa, III EratOSth., 17) " to drink the hemlock." Lysias had a narrow escape, with the help of a large bribe and a lucky accident. He slipped by a back-door out of the house in which he was a prisoner, and took boat to Megara. 403-380. After the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants, the democracy was formally restored in the autumn of 403 B.C. Lysias appears to have rendered valuable services to the exiles during the reign of the tyrants, both by his own liberality and by procuring aid from other quarters. Thrasybulus now proposed that these services should be recognized by the bestowal of the citizenship. The proposal happened to be informal in one particular. The senate of five hun dred had not yet been reconstituted, and hence the measure could not be introduced to the ecclesia by the requisite " preliminary resolution " (7rpo/3oi>Aeuyu.a) of the senate. On this ground it was successfully opposed; and Lysias missed the reward which he had so well earned. That passage of his OAuyu.7Tia/<os ( 3) in which he claims to give advice as a good citizen seems to breathe the feeling that, if he was still but an alien at Athens, he was at least a true 7roAtT?7s of Greece. The last chapter of his life now opens. He is no longer the wealthy merchant, superintending his shield manu factory in the Peirteus. The pillage by the tyrants, and his own generosity to the Athenian exiles, had probably left him poor. He now appears as a hard-working member of a new profession, that of writing speeches to be delivered in the law-courts. The thirty-four compositions extant under his name are but a small fraction of those which the ancient world possessed. From 403 to about 380 B.C. las industry must have been great and 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, and delivered the splendid oration which we possess. This was his only direct contact with Athenian politics. The story that Lysias 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 ; and to this Lysias replied with a defence of the philosopher. A more authentic tradition represents Lysias as having spoken his own " Olympiacus " at the Olympic festival of 388 B.C. The occasion was one of peculiar interest. Dionysius L, tyrant of Syracuse, had sent to the festival a magnificent embassy. Tents embroidered with gold were pitched within the sacred enclosure ; and the wealth of Dionysius was vividly brought before the minds of the Panhellenic concourse by the number of chariuts which he had entered for the most costly and brilliant of the Olympic contests. This was the moment at which 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 B.C. He probably died in or soon after 330 B.C. iiar- The qualities of the man are expressed in his work ; indeed, it is through this, rather than through the recorded
- n facts of his biography, that he becomes a living person to
j. ; work. us - Ik * s a kindly and genial nature which we see reflected there, warm in friendship, loyal to country, with a keen perception of character, and a fine, though strictly con trolled, sense of humour. The literary tact which is so remarkable in the extant speeches is that of a singularly flexible intelligence, always obedient to an instinct of gracefulness. Among the earlier artists of Greek prose Lysias owes his distinctive place to the power of concealing his art. Tbe clients of the professional "speech-writer," like those of the modern advocate, might be of all sorts and conditions. The modern advocate, however, speaks in his own person. The Athenian " logographer " merely wrote the speech which his client delivered. It was obviously desirable that such a speech should be suitable to the age, station, and circumstances of the person into whose mouth it was put. Lysias was the first disciple of Greek rhetoric who succeeded in making this adaptation really artistic. He aimed, not merely at impressive effect in eloquence, pathos, or argument, but at dramatic propriety. Hence it was absolutely essential for him to abandon the stiff and monotonous splendour of the earlier and cruder rhetoric. He could nut achieve his purpose unless he brought his art into harmony with the ordinary idiom of everyday life. His client must appear to be speaking as the citizen, who was not a professed rhe torician, might conceivably speak. Lysias achieved this reconciliation with a skill which can be best appreciated if we turn from the easy flow of his graceful language to the majestic emphasis of his predecessor Antiphon, or to the self-revealing art of his successor Isaeus. Translated into terms of ancient criticism, the achievement of Lysias is described by saying that he became the model of the "plain style" (tcr^us x a P aKTr /P> icr^r/, Arrr), d<eAr;s Ae is; genus tenue or subtile). From the latter part of the 4th century B.C. onwards, Greek, and then Human, critics distinguished three styles of rhetorical composition the " grand " (or " elaborate "), the " plain," and the " middle." These epithets were relative to the language of daily life, the " plain " being nearest to this, and the "grand" furthest from it. 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. We moderns perhaps cannot fully seize that nameless and undefinable grace (^apts) of Lysias which the Greek critic of the Augustan age indicates in such striking words : " When I am puzzled about one of the speeches ascribed to him," says Dionysius, " and when it is hard for me to find the truth by other marks, I have recourse to this excellence, as to the lust piece on the board. Then, if the graces of speech seem to me to make the writing fair, I count it to be of the soul of Lysias ; and I care not to probe the question further. But if the stamp of the lan guage has no winningness, no loveliness, I am chagrined, and sus pect that, after all, the speech is not by Lysias ; and I do no more violence to my instinct (ovKtri /3i.a.o/j.ai -rr^v &ojov aio-Qr^iv], eveu though in all else the speech seems to me clever and well finished, believing that to write well, in special styles other than this, is given to many men, but that to write winningly, gracefully, with loveliness, is the gift of Lysias" (Dionys. , DC Lys., ii. ). The more salient traits of the Lysian style can be Style. recognized by all. The vocabulary is pure and simple. 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 as an essential condition of impressive speaking. Lysias excels in vivid description ; he has also a happy knack of marking the speaker s 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 Aets) and the non-periodic or " continuous" , SiaAeAuyu-eV?;) using now one now the other, or blending them, according to circumstances. His disposi tion of his subject-matter is always simple. The speech
has usually four parts, introduction (Trpoot/xiov), narrative