Lysias

About Lysias

Lysias was an Athenian logographer and one of the ten Attic orators later canonized by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace. He wrote speeches for litigants across a wide range of public and private actions during the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC, with thirty-four transmitted in the medieval corpus and many others known by title or fragment. Ancient critics, especially Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and modern scholarship identify Lysias as an exemplar of the plain style, emphasizing idiomatic diction, character-appropriate voice, and concise narrative framing. His speech Against Eratosthenes and the fragmentary Olympic Oration are commonly cited for historical evidence on postwar Athens and for programmatic statements on Greek politics.

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