This is far less effective than the unexpected turn which Andocides gives to a similar passage.[135]
Finally, the fragment of the speech against Aeschines the Socratic contains a long humorous passage. Aeschines has a mania for borrowing money which he never repays. ‘His neighbours are so badly treated by him that they all move as soon as they can and take houses at a distance.... The crowd of creditors round his doors at daybreak makes people think they are assembling for a funeral,’ and so on, in a comic vein, till the speaker ends with a spiteful remark about Aeschines’ mistress, that ‘you could count her teeth more easily than the fingers of her hand.’
§ 8
Lysias composed an extraordinary number of speeches; of the 425 attributed to him, Dionysius pronounced 233 to be genuine.[136] There are now extant thirty-four, either complete or, in some cases, with portions missing. A hundred and twenty-seven speeches are known by the preservation of their titles or of small fragments.
As we cannot trace with any certainty a chronological development in style, the most convenient classification of the speeches is according to their subject-matter.
Epideictic Speeches
The fragment of the ‘Olympiac’ speech, which is undoubtedly genuine, is an interesting specimen of compositions of this class.
The Sophists had early realized the opportunities which the great assembly of all Greek States gave for an expression of national feeling, and though perhaps the speech-making was instituted chiefly for the display of oratory, the custom had grown up of making it an occasion for discussing broad political questions. Thus Gorgias had preached the necessity of union among Greeks, and in later time Isocrates in his Panegyric was to urge again the need of putting aside petty disputes among cities for the good of the Greek nation.
In 388 B.C. Dionysius of Syracuse had sent a magnificent embassy to the Olympic festival. Lysias, realizing that this despot of the West, who had reduced important cities of Sicily, had defeated Carthage, and was now threatening the towns of Magna Graecia, might become, especially if allied with Persia, a serious menace to the independence of the cities of Greece proper, urged them to sink their private animosities for the good of all, and as a foretaste of their enmity he called upon them to tear down the royal pavilion at Olympia and scatter its treasures.