Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/518

496 496 HISTORY OF THE more into rhetorical casuistry or empty bombast. That higher energy, which results from a consciousness of real greatness, seemed to have vanished from the arts, as it did from the active life of man. And yet it was at this very time that prose literature, freed from the fetters which had bound it hitherto, began a new career, which led to its fairest developement. Lysias and Isocrates (the two young men whom Socrates opposes one to another in Plato's Phcedrus, bitterly reproaching the former, and forming the most brilliant expectations with regard to the latter) gave an entirely new form to oratory by the happy alterations which they, in different ways, introduced into the old prose style. Lysias was descended from a family of distinction at Syracuse. His father, Cephalus, was persuaded by Pericles to settle at Athens, where he lived 30 years :* he is introduced in Plato's Republic, about the year 01. 92, 2. b.c. 411,t as a very old man, respected and loved by all about him. When the great colony of Thurii was founded by an union of nearly all Greece (01. 84, 1. b.c. 444), Lysias went thither, along with his eldest brother Polemarchus, in order to take possession of the lot assigned to his family • at that time he was only 15 years old. At Thurii he devoted himself to rhetoric, as taught in the school of the Sicilian Sophists ; his instructors were the well-known Tisias, and another Syracusan, named Nicias. He did not return to Athens till 01. 92, 1. b c. 412, and lived there some few years in the house of his father Cephalus, till he set up for himself as a professed Sophist. Although he did not enjoy the rights of citizenship at Athens, but was merely a resident alien, § he and his whole family were warmly engaged in favour of the democracy. On this account, the Thirty compelled his brother Polemarchus to drink the cup of hemlock, and Lysias only escaped the rage of the tyrants by flying to Megara. He was thus all the more ready to aid Thrasybulus and the other champions of freedom at Phyle with the remains of his property, and forwarded with all his might the restoration of democracy at Athens He was now once more settled at Athens as proprietor of a shield- manufactory, also teaching rhetoric after the manner of the Sophists, t According to the date of the Republic, as fixed by Bockh in two Programmes of the University of Berlin for the years 1838 and 1839. X Avtrius o (roQurrhs is mentioned in the speech against Nerera (p. 1352 Reiske), and there is no doubt that the orator is meant. ,. Mi «""*«' Thrasybulus wished to have made him a citizen, but circumstances dad not favour his design, and the orator remained an ievnXis, one of a privileged class among the fiAraiKci. As iWsXwj the family had, before the time of the Thirty, served as choregi, like the citizens. oration, § 66) commemorates the strangers, i. e. the resident aliens, who fell fighting m the Peirseus by the side of the liberators of Athens.
 * See Lysias, in Eratosth., § 4.
 * With an obvious manifestation of personal interest, Lysias (in his funeral