[1] Collins, _Account of New South Wales_, ii. 87-92 (London, 1802).
[2] Owing to the imperfection of the specimen at his disposal,
Huxley's brief description of the bones of the head in _Menura_ is
not absolutely correct. A full description of them, with elaborate
figures, is given by Parker in the same Society's _Transactions_ (ix.
306-309, pl. lvi. figs. 1-5).
[3] The metatarsals are very remarkable in form, as already noticed
by Eyton (_loc. cit._), and their tendons strongly ossified.
LYRICAL POETRY, a general term for all poetry which is, or can be
supposed to be, susceptible of being sung to the accompaniment of a
musical instrument. In the earliest times it may be said that all poetry
was of its essence lyrical. The primeval oracles were chanted in verse,
and the Orphic and Bacchic Mysteries, which were celebrated at Eleusis
and elsewhere, combined, it is certain, metre with music. Homer and
Hesiod are each of them represented with a lyre, yet if any poetry can
be described as non-lyrical, it is surely the archaic hexameter of the
_Iliad_ and the _Erga_. These poems were styled epic, in direct
contradistinction to the lyric of Pindar and Bacchylides. But inexactly,
since it is plain that they were recited, with a plain accompaniment on
a stringed instrument. However, the distinction between epical and
lyrical, between [Greek: ta epe], what was said, and [Greek: ta mele],
what was sung, is accepted, and neither Homer nor Hesiod is among the
lyrists. This distinction, however, is often without a difference, as
for example, in the case of the so-called _Hymns_ of Homer, epical in
form but wholly lyrical in character. Hegel, who has gone minutely into
this question in his _Esthetik_, contends that when poetry is objective
it is epical, and when it is subjective it is lyrical. This is to ignore
the metrical form of the poem, and to deal with its character only. It
would constrain us to regard Wordsworth's _Excursion_ as a lyric, and
Tennyson's _Revenge_ (where the subject is treated exactly as one of the
Homeridae would have treated an Ionian myth) as an epic. This is
impossible, and recalls us to the importance of taking the form into
consideration. But, with this warning, the definition of Hegel is
valuable. It is, as he insists, the personal thought, or passion, or
inspiration, which gives its character to lyrical poetry.
The lyric has the function of revealing, in terms of pure art, the
secrets of the inner life, its hopes, its fantastic joys, its sorrows,
its delirium. It is easier to exclude the dramatic species from lyric
than to banish the epic. There are large sections of drama which it is
inconceivable should be set to music, or sung, or even given in
recitative. The tragedies of Racine, for example, are composed of the
purest poetry, but they are essentially non-lyrical, although lyrical
portions are here and there attached to them. The intensity of feeling
and the melody of verse in _Othello_ does not make that work an example
of lyrical poetry, and this is even more acutely true of _Le
Misanthrope_, which is, nevertheless, a poem. The tendency of modern
drama is to divide itself further and further from lyric, but in early
ages the two kinds were indissoluble. Tragedy was goat-song, and the
earliest specimens of it were mainly composed of choruses. As Prof. G.
G. Murray says, in the _Suppliants_ of Aeschylus, the characters "are
singing for two-thirds of the play," accompanied by tumultuous music.
This primitive feature has gradually been worn away; the chorus grew
less and less prominent, and disappeared; the very verse-ornament of
drama tends to vanish, and we have plays essentially so poetical as
those of Ibsen and Maeterlinck written from end to end in bare prose.
To return again to Greece, there was an early distinction, soon
accentuated, between the poetry chanted by a choir of singers, and the
song which expressed the sentiments of a single poet. The latter, the
[Greek: melos] or song proper, had reached a height of technical
perfection in "the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and
sung," as early as the 7th century B.C. That poetess, and her
contemporary Alcaeus, divide the laurels of the pure Greek song of
Dorian inspiration. By their side, and later, flourished the great poets
who set words to music for choirs, Alcman, Arion, Stesichorus, Simonides
and Ibycus, who lead us at the close of the 5th century to Bacchylides
and Pindar, in whom the magnificent tradition of the dithyrambic odes
reached its highest splendour of development. The practice of Pindar and
Sappho, we may say, has directed the course of lyrical poetry ever
since, and will, unquestionably, continue to do so. They discovered how,
with the maximum of art, to pour forth strains of personal magic and
music, whether in a public or a private way. The ecstasy, the uplifted
magnificence, of lyrical poetry could go no higher than it did in the
unmatched harmonies of these old Greek poets, but it could fill a much
wider field and be expressed with vastly greater variety. It did so in
their own age. The gnomic verses of Theognis were certainly sung; so
were the satires of Archilochus and the romantic reveries of Mimnermus.
At the Renaissance, when the traditions of ancient life were taken up
eagerly, and hastily comprehended, it was thought proper to divide
poetry into a diversity of classes. The earliest English critic who
enters into a discussion of the laws of prosody, William Webbe, lays it
down, in 1586, that in verse "the most usual kinds are four, the heroic,
elegiac, iambic and lyric." Similar confusion of terms was common among
the critics of the 15th and 16th centuries, and led to considerable
error. It is plain that a border ballad is heroic, and may yet be
lyrical; here the word "heroic" stands for "epic." It is plain that
whether a poem is lyrical or not had nothing to do with the question
whether it is composed in an iambic measure. Finally, it is undoubted
that the early Greek "elegies" were sung to an accompaniment on the
flute, whether they were warlike, like those of Tyrtaeus, or
philosophical and amatory like those of Theognis. But (see ELEGY) the
present significance of "elegy," and this has been the case ever since
late classical times, is funereal; in modern parlance an elegy is a
dirge. Whether the great Alexandrian dirges, like those of Bion and of
Moschus, on which our elegiacal tradition is founded, were actually sung
to an accompaniment or not may be doubted; they seem too long, too
elaborate, and too ornate for that. But, at any rate, they were composed
on the convention that they would be sung, and it is conceivable that
music might have been wedded to the most complex of these Alexandrian
elegies. Accordingly, although _Lycidas_ and _Adonais_ are not
habitually "set to music," there is no reason why they should not be so
set, and their rounded and limited although extensive form links them
with the song, not with the epic. There are many odes of Swinburne's for
which it would be more difficult to write music than for his _Ave atque
Vale_. In fact, in spite of its solemn and lugubrious regularity, the
formal elegy or dirge is no more nor less than an ode, and is therefore
entirely lyrical.
More difficulty is met with in the case of the sonnet, for although no
piece of verse, when it is inspired by subjective passion, fits more
closely with Hegel's definition of what lyrical poetry should be, yet
the rhythmical complication of the sonnet, and its rigorous uniformity,
seem particularly ill-fitted to interpretation on a lyre. When F. M.
degli Azzi put the book of Genesis (1700) into sonnets, and Isaac de
Benserade the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid (1676) into rondeaux, these
eccentric and laborious versifiers produced what was epical rather than
lyrical poetry, if poetry it was at all. But the sonnet as Shakespeare,
Wordsworth and even Petrarch used it was a cry from the heart, a
subjective confession, and although there is perhaps no evidence that a
sonnet was ever set to music with success, yet there is no reason why
that might not be done without destroying its sonnet-character.
Jouffroy was perhaps the first aesthetician to see quite clearly that
lyrical poetry is, really, nothing more than another name for poetry
itself, that it includes all the personal and enthusiastic part of what
lives and breathes in the art of verse, so that the divisions of
pedantic criticism are of no real avail to us in its consideration. We
recognize a narrative or epical poetry; we recognize drama; in both of
these, when the individual inspiration is strong, there is much that
trembles on the verge of the lyrical. But outside what is pure epic and
pure drama, all, or almost all, is lyrical. We say almost all, because
the difficulty arises of knowing where to place descriptive and
didactic poetry. The _Seasons_ of Thomson, for instance, a poem of high
merit and lasting importance in the history of literature--where is that
to be placed? What is to be said of the _Essay on Man_? In primitive
times, the former would have been classed under epic, the second would
have been composed in the supple iambic trimeter which so closely
resembled daily speech, and would not have been sharply distinguished
from prose. Perhaps this classification would still serve, were it not
for the element of versification, which makes a sharp line of
demarcation between poetic art and prose. This complexity of form,
rhythmical and stanzaic, takes much of the place which was taken in
antiquity by such music as Terpander is supposed to have supplied. In a
perfect lyric by a modern writer the instrument is the metrical form, to
which the words have to adapt themselves. There is perhaps no writer who
has ever lived in whose work this phenomenon may be more fruitfully
studied than it may be in the songs and lyrics of Shelley. The temper of
such pieces as "Arethusa" and "The Cloud" is indicated by a form hardly
more ambitious than a guitar; Hellas is full of passages which suggest
the harp; in his songs Shelley touches the lute or viol de gamba, while
in the great odes to the "West Wind" and to "Liberty" we listen to a
verse-form which reminds us by its volume of the organ itself. On the
whole subject of the nature of lyric poetry no commentary can be more
useful to the student than an examination of the lyrics of Shelley in
relation to those of the songwriters of ancient Greece.
See Hegel, _Die Phänomenologie des Geistes_ (1807); T. S. Jouffroy,
_Cours d'esthétique_ (1843); W. Christ, _Metrik der Griechen und
Römer_, 2te. Aufl. (1879). (E. G.)
LYSANDER (Gr. [Greek: Lysandros]), son of Aristocritus, Spartan admiral
and diplomatist. Aelian (_Var. Hist._ xii. 43) and Phylarchus (_ap._
Athen. vi. 271 e) say that he was a _mothax_, i.e. the son of a helot
mother (see HELOTS), but this tradition is at least doubtful; according
to Plutarch he was a Heraclid, though not of either royal family. We do
not know how he rose to eminence: he first appears as admiral of the
Spartan navy in 407 B.C. The story of his influence with Cyrus the
Younger, his naval victory off Notium, his quarrel with his successor
Callicratidas in 406, his appointment as [Greek: epistoleus] in 405, his
decisive victory at Aegospotami, and his share in the siege and
capitulation of Athens belong to the history of the Peloponnesian War
(q.v.). By 404 he was the most powerful man in the Greek world and set
about completing the task of building up a Spartan empire in which he
should be supreme in fact if not in name. Everywhere democracies were
replaced by oligarchies directed by bodies of ten men (decarchies,
[Greek: dekarchiai]) under the control of Spartan governors (harmosts,
[Greek: harmostai]). But Lysander's boundless influence and ambition,
and the superhuman honours paid him, roused the jealousy of the kings
and the ephors, and, on being accused by the Persian satrap Pharnabazus,
he was recalled to Sparta. Soon afterwards he was sent to Athens with an
army to aid the oligarchs, but Pausanias, one of the kings, followed him
and brought about a restoration of democracy. On the death of Agis II.,
Lysander secured the succession of Agesilaus (q.v.), whom he hoped to
find amenable to his influence. But in this he was disappointed. Though
chosen to accompany the king to Asia as one of his thirty advisers
([Greek: symbouloi]), he was kept inactive and his influence was broken
by studied affronts, and finally he was sent at his own request as envoy
to the Hellespont. He soon returned to Sparta to mature plans for
overthrowing the hereditary kingship and substituting an elective
monarchy open to all Heraclids, or even, according to another version,
to all Spartiates. But his alleged attempts to bribe the oracles were
fruitless, and his schemes were cut short by the outbreak of war with
Thebes in 395. Lysander invaded Boeotia from the west, receiving the
submission of Orchomenus and sacking Lebadea, but the enemy intercepted
his despatch to Pausanias, who had meanwhile entered Boeotia from the
south, containing plans for a joint attack upon Haliartus. The town was
at once strongly garrisoned, and when Lysander marched against it he was
defeated and slain. He was buried in the territory of Panopeus, the
nearest Phocian city. An able commander and an adroit diplomatist,
Lysander was fired by the ambition to make Sparta supreme in Greece and
himself in Sparta. To this end he shrank from no treachery or cruelty;
yet, like Agesilaus, he was totally free from the characteristic Spartan
vice of avarice, and died, as he had lived, a poor man.
See the biographies by Plutarch and Nepos; Xen. _Hellenica_, i. 5-iii.
5; Diod. Sic. xiii. 70 sqq., 104 sqq., xiv. 3, 10, 13, 81; Lysias xii.
60 sqq.; Justin v. 5-7; Polyaenus i. 45, vii. 19; Pausanias iii., ix.
32, 5-10, x. 9, 7-11; C. A. Gehlert, _Vita Lysandri_ (Bautzen, 1874);
W. Vischer, _Alkibiades und Lysandros_ (Basel, 1845); O. H. J.
Nitzsch, _De Lysandro_ (Bonn, 1847); and the Greek histories in
general. (M. N. T.)
LYSANIAS, tetrarch of Abilene (see ABILA), according to Luke iii. 1, in
the time of John the Baptist. The only Lysanias mentioned in profane
history as exercising authority in this district was executed in 36 B.C.
by M. Antonius (Mark Antony). This Lysanias was the son of Ptolemy
Mennaeus, the ruler of an independent state, of which Abilene formed
only a small portion. According to Josephus (_Ant._ xix. 5, 1) the
emperor Claudius in A.D. 42 confirmed Agrippa I. in the possession of
"Abila of Lysanias" already bestowed upon him by Caligula, elsewhere
described as "Abila, which had formed the tetrarchy of Lysanias." It is
argued that this cannot refer to the Lysanias executed by M. Antonius,
since his paternal inheritance, even allowing for some curtailment by
Pompey, must have been of far greater extent. It is therefore assumed by
some authorities that the Lysanias in Luke (A.D. 28-29) is a younger
Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene only, one of the districts into which the
original kingdom was split up after the death of Lysanias I. This
younger Lysanias may have been a son of the latter, and identical with,
or the father of, the Claudian Lysanias. On the other hand, Josephus
knows nothing of a younger Lysanias, and it is suggested by others that
he really does refer to Lysanias I. The explanation given by M. Krenkel
(_Josephus und Lucas_, Leipzig, 1894, p. 97) is that Josephus does not
mean to imply that Abila was the only possession of Lysanias, and that
he calls it the tetrarchy or kingdom of Lysanias because it was the last
remnant of the domain of Lysanias which remained under direct Roman
administration until the time of Agrippa. The expression was borrowed
from Josephus by Luke, who wrongly imagined that Lysanias I. had ruled
almost up to the time of the bestowal of his tetrarchy upon Agrippa, and
therefore to the days of John the Baptist. Two inscriptions are adduced
as evidence for the existence of a younger Lysanias--Bockh, _C.I.G._
4521 and 4523. The former is inconclusive, and in the latter the reading
[Greek: Ans[aniou]] is entirely conjectural; the name might equally well
be Lysimachus or Lysias.
See E. Schürer, _Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes_ (3rd ed., 1901), i.
p. 712; and (especially on the inscriptional evidence) E. Renan,
"Mémoire sur la dynastie des Lysanias d'Abilene" in _Mémoires de
l'institut imperial de France_ (xxvi., 1870); also P. W. Schmiedel in
the _Encyclopaedia Biblica_, s.v.
LYSIAS, Attic orator, was born, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus
and the author of the life ascribed to Plutarch, in 459 B.C. This date
was evidently obtained by reckoning back from the foundation of Thurii
(444 B.C.), since there was a tradition that Lysias had gone thither at
the age of fifteen. Modern critics would place his birth later,--between
444 and 436 B.C.,--because, in Plato's _Republic_, of which the scene is
laid about 430 B.C., Cephalus, the father of Lysias, is among the
_dramatis personae_, and the emigration of Lysias to Thurii was said to
have followed his father's death. The latter statement, however, rests
only on the Plutarchic life; nor can Plato's dialogue be safely urged as
a minutely accurate authority. The higher date assigned by the ancient
writers agrees better with the tradition that Lysias reached, or passed,
the age of eighty.[1] Cephalus, his father, was a native of Syracuse,
and on the invitation of Pericles had settled at Athens. The opening
scene of Plato's _Republic_ is laid at the house of his eldest son,
Polemarchus, in Peiraeus. The tone of the picture warrants the inference
that the Sicilian family were well known to Plato, and that their
houses must often have been hospitable to such gatherings.
At Thurii, the colony newly planted on the Tarentine Gulf (see
PERICLES), the boy may have seen Herodotus, now a man in middle life,
and a friendship may have grown up between them. There, too, Lysias is
said to have commenced his studies in rhetoric--doubtless under a master
of the Sicilian school--possibly, as tradition said, under Tisias, the
pupil of Corax, whose name is associated with the first attempt to
formulate rhetoric as an art. In 413 B.C. the Athenian armament in
Sicily was annihilated. The desire to link famous names is illustrated
by the ancient ascription to Lysias of a rhetorical exercise purporting
to be a speech in which the captive general Nicias appealed for mercy to
the Sicilians. The terrible blow to Athens quickened the energies of an
anti-Athenian faction at Thurii. Lysias and his elder brother
Polemarchus, with three hundred other persons, were "accused of
Atticizing." They were driven from Thurii and settled at Athens (412
B.C.).
Lysias and Polemarchus were rich men, having inherited property from
their father; and Lysias claims that, though merely resident aliens,
they discharged public services with a liberality which shamed many of
those who enjoyed the franchise (_In Eratosth._ 20). The fact that they
owned house property shows that they were classed as [Greek: isoteleis],
i.e. foreigners who paid only the same tax as citizens, being exempt
from the special tax ([Greek: metoikion]) on resident aliens.
Polemarchus occupied a house in Athens itself, Lysias another in the
Peiraeus, near which was their shield manufactory, employing a hundred
and twenty skilled slaves. In 404 the Thirty Tyrants were established at
Athens under the protection of a Spartan garrison. One of their earliest
measures was an attack upon the resident aliens, who were represented as
disaffected to the new government. Lysias and Polemarchus were on a list
of ten singled out to be the first victims. Polemarchus was arrested,
and compelled to drink hemlock. Lysias had a narrow escape, with the
help of a large bribe. He slipped by a back-door out of the house in
which he was a prisoner, and took boat to Megara. It appears that he had
rendered valuable services to the exiles during the reign of the
tyrants, and in 403 Thrasybulus proposed that these services should be
recognized by the bestowal of the citizenship. The Boule, however, had
not yet been reconstituted, and hence the measure could not be
introduced to the ecclesia by the requisite "preliminary resolution"
([Greek: probouleuma]). On this ground it was successfully opposed.
During his later years Lysias--now probably a comparatively poor man
owing to the rapacity of the tyrants and his own generosity to the
Athenian exiles--appears as a hardworking member of a new
profession--that of writing speeches to be delivered in the law-courts.
The thirty-four extant are but a small fraction. From 403 to about 380
B.C. his industry must have been incessant. The notices of his personal
life in these years are scanty. In 403 he came forward as the accuser of
Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants. This was his only direct
contact with Athenian politics. The story that he wrote a defence for
Socrates, which the latter declined to use, probably arose from a
confusion. Several years after the death of Socrates the sophist
Polycrates composed a declamation against him, to which Lysias replied.
A more authentic tradition represents Lysias as having spoken his own
_Olympiacus_ at the Olympic festival of 388 B.C., to which Dionysius I.
of Syracuse had sent a magnificent embassy. Tents embroidered with gold
were pitched within the sacred enclosure; and the wealth of Dionysius
was vividly shown by the number of chariots which he had entered. Lysias
lifted up his voice to denounce Dionysius as, next to Artaxerxes, the
worst enemy of Hellas, and to impress upon the assembled Greeks that one
of their foremost duties was to deliver Sicily from a hateful
oppression. The latest work of Lysias which we can date (a fragment of a
speech _For Pherenicus_) belongs to 381 or 380 B.C. He probably died in
or soon after 380 B.C.
Lysias was a man of kindly and genial nature, warm in friendship, loyal
to country, with a keen perception of character. and a fine though
strictly controlled sense of humour. The literary tact which is so
remarkable in the extant speeches is that of a singularly flexible
intelligence, always obedient to an instinct of gracefulness. He owes
his distinctive place to the power of concealing his art. It was
obviously desirable that a speech written for delivery by a client
should be suitable to his age, station and circumstances. Lysias was the
first to make this adaptation really artistic. His skill can be best
appreciated if we turn from the easy flow of his graceful language to
the majestic emphasis of Antiphon, or to the self-revealing art of
Isaeus. Translated into terms of ancient criticism, he became the model
of the "plain style" ([Greek: iochnos charakter, iochne, lite, apheles
lexis]: _genus tenue_ or _subtile_). Greek and then Roman critics
distinguished three styles of rhetorical composition--the "grand" (or
"elaborate"), the "plain" and the "middle," the "plain" being nearest to
the language of daily life. Greek rhetoric began in the "grand" style;
then Lysias set an exquisite pattern of the "plain"; and Demosthenes
might be considered as having effected an almost ideal compromise.
The vocabulary of Lysias is pure and simple. Most of the rhetorical
"figures" are sparingly used--except such as consist in the parallelism
or opposition of clauses. The taste of the day--not yet emancipated from
the influence of the Sicilian rhetoric--probably demanded a large use of
antithesis. Lysias excels in vivid description; he has also a happy
knack of marking the speaker's character by light touches. The structure
of his sentences varies a good deal according to the dignity of the
subject. He has equal command over the "periodic" style ([Greek:
katestrammene lexis]) and the non-periodic or "continuous" ([Greek:
eiromene, dialelumene]). His disposition of his subject-matter is always
simple. The speech has usually four parts--introduction ([Greek:
prooimion]), narrative of facts ([Greek: diegesis]), proofs ([Greek:
pisteis]), which may be either external, as from witnesses, or internal,
derived from argument on the facts, and, lastly, conclusion ([Greek:
epilogos]). It is in the introduction and the narrative that Lysias is
seen at his best. In his greatest extant speech--that _Against
Eratosthenes_--and also in the fragmentary _Olympiacus_, he has pathos
and fire; but these were not characteristic qualities of his work. In
Cicero's judgment (_De Orat._ iii. 7, 28) Demosthenes was peculiarly
distinguished by force (_vis_), Aeschines by resonance (_sonitus_),
Hypereides by acuteness (_acumen_), Isocrates by sweetness (_suavitas_);
the distinction which he assigns to Lysias is _subtilitas_, an Attic
refinement--which, as he elsewhere says (_Brutus_, 16, 64) is often
joined to an admirable vigour (_lacerti_). Nor was it oratory alone to
which Lysias rendered service; his work had an important effect on all
subsequent Greek prose, by showing how perfect elegance could be joined
to plainness. Here, in his artistic use of familiar idiom, he might
fairly be called the Euripides of Attic prose. And his style has an
additional charm for modern readers, because it is employed in
describing scenes from the everyday life of Athens.[2]
Thirty-four speeches (three fragmentary) have come down under the name
of Lysias; one hundred and twenty-seven more, now lost, are known from
smaller fragments or from titles. In the Augustan age four hundred and
twenty-five works bore his name, of which more than two hundred were
allowed as genuine by the critics. Our thirty-four works may be
classified as follows:--
A. EPIDEICTIC.--1. _Olympiacus_, xxxiii. 388 B.C.; 2. _Epitaphius_,
ii. (purporting to have been spoken during the Corinthian War;
certainly spurious), perhaps composed about 380-340 B.C. ("soon after
387," Blass).
B. DELIBERATIVE.--Plea for the Constitution, xxxiv., 403 B.C.
C. FORENSIC, IN PUBLIC CAUSES.--I. _Relating to Offences directly
against the State ([Greek: graphai demosion adikematon]); such as
treason, malversation in office, embezzlement of public moneys._ 1.
For Polystratus, xx., 407 B.C.; 2. Defence on a Charge of Taking
Bribes, xxi., 402 B.C.; 3. Against Ergocles, xxviii., 389 B.C.; 4.
Against Epicrates, xxvii., 389 B.C.; 5. Against Nicomachus, xxx., 399
B.C.; 6. Against the Corndealers, xxii., 386 B.C. (?) II. _Cause
relating to Unconstitutional Procedure_ ([Greek: graphe paranomon]).
On the Property of the Brother of Nicias, xviii., 395 B.C. III.
_Causes relating to Claims for Money withheld from the State ([Greek:
apographai])_. 1. For the Soldier, ix. (probably not by Lysias, but by
an imitator, writing for a real cause), 394 B.C. (?); 2. On the
Property of Aristophanes, xix., 387 B.C.; 3. Against Philocrates,
xxix., 389 B.C. IV. _Causes relating to a Scrutiny ([Greek:
dokimasia]); especially the Scrutiny, by the Senate, of Officials
Designate._ 1. Against Evandrus, xxvi., 382 B.C.; 2. For Mantitheus,
xvi., 392 B.C.; 3. Against Philon, xxxi., between 404 and 395 B.C.; 4.
Defence on a Charge of Seeking to Abolish the Democracy, xxv., 401
B.C.; 5. For the Invalid, xxiv., 402 B.C. (?) V. _Causes relating to
Military Offences ([Greek: graphai lipotaxiou, astrateias])._ 1.
Against Alcibiades, I. and II. (xiv., xv.), 395 B.C. VI. _Causes
relating to Murder or Intent to Murder_ ([Greek: graphai phonou,
traumatos ek pronoias]). 1. Against Eratosthenes, xii., 403 B.C.; 2.
Against Agoratus, xiii., 399 B.C.; 3. On the Murder of Eratosthenes,
i. (date uncertain); 4. Against Simon, iii., 393 B.C.; 5. On Wounding
with Intent, iv. (date uncertain). VII. _Causes relating to Impiety_
([Greek: graphai asebeias]). 1. Against Andocides, vi. (certainly
spurious, but perhaps contemporary); 2. For Callias, v. (date
uncertain); 3. On the Sacred Olive, vii., not before 395 B.C.
D. FORENSIC, IN PRIVATE CAUSES.--I. _Action for Libel_ ([Greek: dike
kakegorias]). Against Theomnestus, x., 384-383 B.C. (the so-called
second speech, xi., is merely an epitome of the first). II. _Action by
a Ward against a Guardian_ ([Greek: dike epitropes]). Against
Diogeiton, xxxii., 400 B.C. III. _Trial of a Claim to Property_
([Greek: diadikasia]). On the property of Eraton, xvii., 397 B.C. IV.
_Answer to a Special Plea ([Greek: pros paragraphen])._ Against
Pancleon, xxiii. (date uncertain).
E. MISCELLANEOUS.--1. To his Companions, a Complaint of Slanders,
viii. (certainly spurious); 2. The [Greek: erotikos] in Plato's
_Phaedrus_, pp. 230 E-234. This has generally been regarded as Plato's
own work; but the certainty of this conclusion will be doubted by
those who observe (1) the elaborate preparations made in the dialogue
for a recital of the [Greek: erotikos] which shall be _verbally
exact_, and (2) the closeness of the criticism made upon it. If the
satirist were merely analysing his own composition, such criticism
would have little point. Lysias is the earliest writer who is known to
have composed [Greek: erotikoi]; it is as representing both rhetoric
and a false [Greek: eros] that he is the object of attack in the
_Phaedrus_.
F. FRAGMENTS.--Three hundred and fifty-five of these are collected by
Sauppe, _Oratores Attici_, ii. 170-216. Two hundred and fifty-two of
them represent one hundred and twenty-seven speeches of known title;
and of six the fragments are comparatively large. Of these, the
fragmentary speech _For Pherenicus_ belongs to 381 or 380 B.C., and is
thus the latest known work of Lysias.[3]
In literary and historical interest, the first place among the extant
speeches of Lysias belongs to that _Against Eratosthenes_ (403 B.C.),
one of the Thirty Tyrants, whom Lysias arraigns as the murderer of his
brother Polemarchus. The speech is an eloquent and vivid picture of
the reign of terror which the Thirty established at Athens; the
concluding appeal, to both parties among the citizens, is specially
powerful. Next in importance is the speech _Against Agoratus_ (399
B.C.), one of our chief authorities for the internal history of Athens
during the months which immediately followed the defeat at
Aegospotami. The _Olympiacus_ (388 B.C.) is a brilliant fragment,
expressing the spirit of the festival at Olympia, and exhorting Greeks
to unite against their common foes. The _Plea for the Constitution_
(403 B.C.) is interesting for the manner in which it argues that the
wellbeing of Athens--now stripped of empire--is bound up with the
maintenance of democratic principles. The speech _For Mantitheus_ (392
B.C.) is a graceful and animated portrait of a young Athenian [Greek:
hippeus], making a spirited defence of his honour against the charge
of disloyalty. The defence _For the Invalid_ is a humorous
character-sketch. The speech _Against Pancleon_ illustrates the
intimate relations between Athens and Plataea, while it gives us some
picturesque glimpses of Athenian town life. The defence of the person
who had been charged with destroying a _moria_, or sacred olive,
places us amidst the country life of Attica. And the speech _Against
Theomnestus_ deserves attention for its curious evidence of the way in
which the ordinary vocabulary of Athens had changed between 600 and
400 B.C.
All MSS. of Lysias yet collated have been derived, as H. Sauppe first
showed, from the Codex Palatinus X. (Heidelberg). The next most
valuable MS. is the Laurentianus C (15th century), which I. Bekker
chiefly followed. Speaking generally, we may say that these two MSS.
are the only two which carry much weight where the text is seriously
corrupt. In _Oratt._ i.-ix. Bekker occasionally consulted eleven other
MSS., most of which contain only the above nine speeches: viz.,
Marciani F, G, I, K (Venice); Laurentiani D, E (Florence); Vaticani M,
N; Parisini U, V; Urbinas O.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Editio princeps, Aldus (Venice, 1513); by I. Bekker
(1823) and W. S. Dobson (1828) in _Oratores Attici_; C. Scheibe (1852)
and T. Thalheim (1901, Teubner series, with bibliography); C. G. Cobet
(4th ed., by J. J. Hartman, 1905); with variorum notes, by J. J.
Reiske (1772). Editions of select speeches by J. H. Bremi (1845); R.
Rauchenstein (1848, revised by C. Fuhr, 1880-1881); H. Frohberger
(1866-1871); H. van Herwerden (1863); A. Weidner (1888); E. S.
Shuckburgh (1882); A. Westermann and W. Binder (1887-1890); G. P.
Bristol (1892), M. H. Morgan (1895), C. D. Adams (1905), all three
published in America. There is a special lexicon to Lysias by D. H.
Holmes (Bonn, 1895). See also Jebb's _Attic Orators_ (1893) and
_Selections from the Attic Orators_ (2nd ed., 1888) and F. Blass,
_Die Attische Beredsamkeit_ (2nd ed., 1887-1898); W. L. Devries,
_Ethopoiia. A rhetorical study of the types of character in the
orations of Lysias_ (Baltimore, 1892). (R. C. J.; X.)