Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/365

 CHARACTER OF LYSIAS. IS^US 341 tion, which the crowd proceeded to do. The act must have lowered Athens in the eyes of Greece. It is valu- able to us as showing that there was a real Lysias capable of passion and indiscretion beneath that cloak of infinite tact and good temper, and "remoteness from the possi- bility of making a mistake," which is preserved to us in the speeches. Is^us of Chalkis was, like Lysias, a foreigner, but, unlike him, accepted frankly his exclusion from political life. We possess ten complete speeches of his, and large fragments of two more. All are about inheritances, and all effective ; though the ancient judgment is true, which says that while Lysias preserves an air of candour when his processes are most questionable, Isaeus hammers so minutely at his arguments that he generally rouses dis- trust. His extant speeches fall between 390 and 340 B.C. ISOCRATES, SON OF ThEODORUS, FROM ERCHIA (436-338 B.C.). ISOCRATES's century of life reaches through the most eventful century of Greek history, from Pericles to Alexander. He was the son of a rich flute-maker, and held the views of the cultivated middle class. He was in close relation with the great orator and statesman of the moderates, Theramenes, and his successor Archi- nus, the disfranchiser of Lysias. He was an enthusiast for education. He heard Protagoras, Prodicus, and Socrates. In his old age he speaks with pride of his school-days, and in a sense he spent all his life in school as learner and teacher. He never looked to a public career. His views were unpopular. He was scrupulous