Lysias, while he never attained Athenian citizenship, resided most of his life at Athens, and took an important and intimate part in the affairs of that city while it was a democracy. The ancient historians place his birth at 459 b. c., and his death at 378 b. c., but modern critics would place his birth at about 440 b. c., and his death at 380 b. c. Thirty-four orations are ascribed to Lysias, but the authenticity of several of them is questionable. His style is simple and clear, at the same time possessing force and vividness of expression.
The oration here given was delivered in Athens in 403 b. c., and is considered the best of his speeches that have come down to us. Eratosthenes was one of the Thirty Tyrants who decreed the death of the brother of Lysias.
Against Eratosthenes (403 b. c.). It is an easy matter, O Athenians, to begin this accusation. But to end it without doing injustice to the cause will be attended with no small difficulty. For the crimes of Eratosthenes are not only too atrocious to describe, but too many to enumerate. No exaggeration can exceed, and within the time assigned for this discourse it is impossible fully to represent them. This trial, too, is attended with another singularity. In other causes it is usual to ask the accusers: “What is your resentment against the defendants?” But here you must ask the defendant: “What was your resentment against your country? What malice did you bear your fellow citizens? Why did you rage with unbridled fury against the state itself?”
The time has now indeed come, Athenians, when, insensible to pity and tenderness, you must be armed with just severity against Eratosthenes and his associates. What avails it to have conquered them in the field, if you be overcome by them in your councils? Do not show them more favor for what they boast they will perform, than resentment for what they have already committed. Nor, after having been at so much pains to become masters of their persons, allow them to escape without suffering that punishment which you once sought to inflict; but prove yourselves worthy of that good fortune which has given you power over your enemies.
The contest is very unequal between Eratosthenes and you. Formerly he was both judge and accuser; but we, even while we accuse, must at the same time make our defense. Those who were innocent he put to death without trial. To those who are guilty we allow the benefit of law, even though no adequate punishment can ever be inflicted. For should we sacrifice them and their children, would this compensate for the murder of your fathers, your sons, and your brothers? Should we deprive them of their property, would this indemnify the individuals whom they have beggared, or the State which they have plundered? Though they can not suffer a punishment adequate to their demerit, they ought not, surely, on this account, to escape. Yet how matchless is the effrontery of Eratosthenes, who, being now judged by the very persons whom he formerly injured, still ventures to make his defense before the witnesses of his crimes. What can show more evidently the contempt in which he holds you, or the confidence which he reposes in others?
Let me now conclude with laying before you the miseries to which you were reduced, that you may see the necessity of taking punishment on the authors of them. And first, you who remained in the city, consider the severity of their government. You were reduced to such a situation as to be forced to carry on a war, in which, if you were conquered, you partook indeed of the same liberty with the conquerors; but if you proved victorious, you remained under the slavery of your magistrates. As to you of the Piraeus, you will remember that though you never lost your arms in the battles which you fought, yet you suffered by these men what your foreign enemies could never accomplish, and at home, in times of peace, were disarmed by your fellow citizens. By them you were banished from the country left you by your fathers. Their rage, knowing no abatement, pursued you abroad, and drove you from one territory to another. Recall the cruel indignities which you suffered; how you were dragged from the tribunal and the altars; how no place, however sacred, could shelter you against their violence. Others, torn from their wives, their children, their parents, after putting an end to their miserable lives, were deprived of funeral rites; for these tyrants imagined their government so firmly established that even the vengeance of the gods was unable to shake it.
But it is impossible for one, or in the course of one trial, to enumerate the means which were employed to undermine the power of this state, the arsenals which were demolished, the temples sold or profaned, the citizens banished or murdered, and those whose dead bodies were impiously left uninterred. Those citizens now watch your decree, uncertain whether you will prove accomplices of their death or avengers of their murder. I shall desist from any further accusations. You have heard, you have seen, you have experienced. Decide then!
isocrates
Isocrates, one of the greatest of the great men who lived between 500 and 300 b. c., and made Greece famous for literary and oratorical preëminence, owes his renown not to his ability as a deliverer of speeches, but as a constructor of them, and as a teacher of rhetoric and oratory. He understood the principles of vocal expression perfectly, but he was of a retiring nature and lacked volume of voice, the latter being a particularly serious drawback because of the necessity of speaking in the open before vast concourses of people. He withdrew from active participation in the public life of Athens, and opened a school in that city for the training of orators. Isaeus, the teacher of Demosthenes, was one of his pupils. Isocrates was born in 436 b. c., and died at the age of ninety-eight.
Encomium on Evagoras. When I saw, O Nicocles, that you were honoring the tomb of your father, not only with numerous and magnificent offerings, according to custom, but also with dances, musical exhibitions, and athletic contests, as well as with horse races and trireme races, on a scale that left no possibility of their being surpassed, I thought that Evagoras, if the dead have any feeling of what happens on earth, while accepting this offering favorably, and beholding with joy your filial regard for him and your magnificence, would feel far greater gratitude to any one who could show himself capable of worthily describing his mode of life and the dangers he had undergone than to any one else; for we shall find that ambitious and high-souled men not only prefer praise to such honors, but choose a glorious death in preference to life, and are more jealous of their reputation than of their existence, shrinking from nothing in order to leave behind a remembrance of themselves that shall never die.