In the extant fragment the speaker warns his hearers that much of the Greek world is in the hands of tyrants, and much under barbarian sway. This is owing to the weakness caused by internal discord. Empire depends on command of the seas, and Dionysius and Artaxerxes are both strong in ships.
‘You ought therefore to lay aside your war with each other, and by harmonious action make a bid for safety; you should view the past with shame and the future with apprehension.’
He invites Sparta to take the lead. The substance of the end of the speech is known to us only from the ‘argument,’ but the fragment is long enough to be judged as a simple yet dignified composition.
The Epitaphios or Funeral Speech purports to relate to the Athenians who fell in the Corinthian war, c. 394 B.C., though it is impossible to determine the year precisely.
Such speeches were habitually delivered at Athens, a speaker of established reputation being generally chosen to perform the service. Now Lysias, not being a citizen, could not be so chosen, and, if the speech was really delivered, he can hardly have composed it; for a practised public speaker would probably not require the services of a professional logographos.[137]
An extract from the peroration will give a general idea of the style:
‘And so we may deem these men most happy, in that they faced and met their end on behalf of all that is great and noble, not committing themselves to chance, nor awaiting the death that comes in nature’s course, but choosing the noblest way of dying.
‘For their memory is ageless, and their honour is envied of all men; we mourn for them as mortal in their nature, but we celebrate them as immortal for their valour. They are receiving a public funeral, and in their honour we institute displays of strength and wisdom and wealth, holding them who have died in battle worthy to be honoured with the same honour as the immortals. So I call them happy in their death, and envy them therefor, and think it should be said that life was worth the possessing only for those men who, endowed with mortal bodies, have left behind them through their valour a memorial that is immortal. Still, we must follow ancient custom, and, obeying the law of our fathers, make lamentation for those whom we are burying to-day.’[138]
There is nothing striking or original in this peroration, which recalls the fragment of the funeral speech of Gorgias, especially in the forced and repeated contrasts between ‘mortal’ and ‘immortal.’ In manner and in substance it is infinitely inferior to the famous speech of Pericles, which, with all its extravagances of style, has a note of true feeling. The Epitaphios of Lysias rings hollow; it is feeble in imagery, it contains very little reference to the dead, and holds out no hope of comfort to the living. The allusions to the Persian war are part of the rhetorical paraphernalia such as stirred the bile of Aristophanes, while the historical references to the supposed circumstances of the speech are so vague as not to be appropriate to any particular occasion.