LYSIAS was the son of Cephalus, grandson of Lysanias, and
great-grandson of Cephalus. His father was by birth a Syracusan; but
partly for the love he had to the city, and partly in condescension
to the persuasions of Pericles the son of Xanthippus, who entertained
him as his friend and guest, he went to live at Athens, being a man of
great wealth. Some say that he was banished Syracuse when the city was
under the tyranny of Gelo. Lysias was born at Athens when Philocles,
the successor of Phrasicles, was chief magistrate, in the second year
of the eightieth Olympiad.[9] At his first coming, he was educated
among the most noble of the Athenians. But when the city sent a colony
to Sybaris, which was afterwards called Thurii, he went thither with
his other brother Polemarchus, his father being now dead (for he had
two other brothers, Euthydemus and Brachyllus), that he might receive
his portion of his father’s estate. This was done in the fifteenth year
of his age, when Praxiteles was chief magistrate.[10] There then he
stayed, and was brought up under Nicias and Tisias, both Syracusans.
And having purchased a house and received his estate, he lived as a
citizen for thirty-three years, till the year of Cleocritus.[11] In
the year following, in the time of Callias, viz. in the ninety-second
Olympiad, when the Athenians had met with their disasters in Sicily,
and when other of their allies revolted, and especially the Italians,
he, being accused of favoring the Athenians, was banished with three
other of his association; when coming to Athens, in the year wherein
Callias succeeded Cleocritus, the city then laboring under the tyranny
of the four hundred conspirators, he there sat down. But after
the fight at Aegospotami, when the Thirty Tyrants had usurped the
government, he was banished thence, after he had remained in Athens
seven years. His goods were confiscated; and having likewise lost his
brother Polemarchus, he himself escaped by a back door of the house
in which he was kept for execution, fled to Megara and there lived.
But when the citizens endeavored to return from Phyle, he also behaved
himself very well, and appeared very active in the affair, having,
to forward this great enterprise, deposited two thousand drachms of
silver and two hundred targets, and being commissioned with Hermas, he
maintained three hundred men in arms, and prevailed with Thrasylaeus
the Elean, his old friend and host, to contribute two talents. Upon
entering the city, Thrasybulus proposed that, for a consideration
of his good service to the public, he should receive the rights of
citizenship: this was during the so-called time of anarchy before
Euclides. Which proposal being ratified by the people, Archinus
objected that it was against the laws, and a decree without authority
of the senate. The decree was thereupon declared void, and Lysias lost
his citizenship. He led the remainder of his life in the rank of an
_Isoteles_ (or citizen who had no right to vote or hold office), and
died at last at Athens, being fourscore and three years old, or as some
would have it, seventy-six; and others again say, that he lived above
fourscore years, till after the birth of Demosthenes. It is supposed he
was born in the year of Philocles.
There are four hundred and twenty-five orations which bear his name,
of which Dionysius and Caecilius affirm only two hundred and thirty
to be genuine, and he is said to have been overcome but twice in all.
There is extant also the oration which he made in defence of the
fore-mentioned decree against Archinus, who indicted it and thereby
prevented Lysias from receiving the citizenship, as also another
against the Thirty Tyrants. He was very cogent in his persuasions, and
was always very brief in what he delivered. He would commonly give
orations to private persons. There are likewise his institutions of
oratory, his public harangues, his epistles, his eulogies, funeral
orations, discourses of love, and his defence of Socrates, accommodated
to the minds of the judges. His style seems plain and easy, though
hardly imitable. Demosthenes, in his oration against Neaera, says that
he was in love with one Metanira, Neaera’s serving-maid, but afterwards
married his brother Brachyllus’s daughter. Plato in his Phaedrus makes
mention of him, as a most eloquent orator and ancienter than Isocrates.
Philiscus, his companion, and Isocrates’s votary, composed an epigram
concerning him, whence the same that we have urged from Plato is
deducible; and it sings to this effect:
Calliope’s witty daughter, Phrontis, show
If aught of wit or eloquence thou hast;
For ’tis decreed that thou shalt bear a son,
Lysias by name, to spread the name of him
Whose great and generous acts do fill the world,
And are received for glorious above.
Let him who sings those praises of the dead,
Let him, my friend, too, praise our amity.
He likewise wrote two orations for Iphicrates,—one against Harmodius,
and another accusing Timotheus of treason,—in both which he overcame.
But when Iphicrates made himself responsible for Timotheus’s actions,
and would purge himself of the allegation of treason made also against
him, Lysias wrote an oration for him to deliver in his defence; upon
which he was acquitted, but Timotheus was fined in a considerable sum
of money. He likewise delivered an oration at the Olympic games, in
which he endeavored to convince the Greeks of how great advantage it
would be to them, if they could but unanimously join to pull down the
tyrant Dionysius.