Another good example of this realism in depicting character is the speech de Caede Eratosthenis. Lysias seems to have given us just the kind of speech that is appropriate to a rather stupid man of the lower middle classes who, by his own showing, is no better than his neighbours, though no worse. Incidentally, the whole speech is an important contribution to our knowledge of domestic arrangements in an Athenian home:
‘So things went on, till one day I returned unexpectedly from the country. After dinner the baby was crying and fidgeting—the servant had been teasing it on purpose, to make it cry, for Eratosthenes was in the house: I heard all about that afterwards.—I told my wife to go and feed the baby, to stop it crying. She refused at first, pretending to be glad to have me back after so long; but when I grew annoyed and told her again to go, “Yes,” said she, “and leave you and the servant alone up here; I know how you behaved one night when you were drunk.” I laughed, but she got up and went away and shut the door, treating it as a joke, and drew the bolt outside. I thought nothing of it, and had no suspicion, and was glad to go to sleep after my day’s work in the country. Early in the morning she came back and opened the door, and when I asked why the doors had banged in the night, she told me that the lamp beside the child’s bed had gone out, and she had fetched a light from a neighbour. I made no remark, supposing that this was the truth. I had an idea that her face was powdered, although her brother had died less than a month ago; but for all that I said nothing more about it, and left the house and went on my business without comment.’[129]
§ 6
Though Lysias shows dramatic instinct in the representation of character, he seldom employs theatrical effects for the purpose of overpowering the feelings of the court. He trusts more to logic than to the elements of pity and terror, and shows a moderation of language comparable to the self-restraint which characterizes his style in general. He avoids exaggeration of every kind; even the story of his own arrest is told in a dispassionate, almost impersonal style.[130] There can be no doubt that Lysias thus gains greatly in dignity. The prison scene described by Andocides[131] may appeal more to our feelings, but certainly more impressive is the solemnity of a similar scene in Lysias:
‘When they were condemned to death, and their end was near, they sent for various kinswomen—sister, mother, wife, as the case might be—to visit them in prison, in order that they might, before they died, bid them a last farewell. Dionysodorus sent for my sister, who was his wife. Receiving the message, she came dressed in mourning as a fit tribute to her husband’s condition.’[132]
The prisoner then disposed of his property, and ‘solemnly warned his wife, if she should bear a son, to tell the child that Agoratus had killed his father, and bid him take vengeance on the murderer.’
There is no hint here of such weeping and wailing as Andocides describes; nothing but the quiet pathos of the story itself to work upon the feelings. To a certain class of audience this style would appeal more truly than any extravagance of grief, and passages of this kind should be enough to refute the common charge against Lysias that he lacks pathos.
§ 7
Lysias was not without a sense of humour, and sometimes employed sarcasm which could be delicate and playful or bitter to the point of brutality according to circumstances; thus in the Epitaphios he remarks how the Persians thought that their best chance of success would be to invade Greece ‘while Greece was still quarrelling as to the best means of defence against invasion.’[133]
Other sentences may be found in the speech For the Cripple.[134] Sometimes a sarcastic reference is introduced by a play on words—as βουλεύειν—δουλεύειν in Philo, § 26—‘He desires the position of a public servant; that of a public slave is what he deserves.’ Out of several instances in the Nicomachus one may be quoted, in comparison with a rather similar passage in Andocides: ‘He has now become a citizen instead of a slave, a rich man instead of a poor man, a legislator instead of an under-clerk.’