Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/120

 110 Journal of Philology. only a faint though noble echo in the pages of the histo- rian if the brief, pregnant, soldier-like eloquence of Phocion is known to us only by hearsay if the brilliant, dashing, versatile Demades, the greatest natural orator of his day, has found no fitter representative than a meagre and suspicious fragment these are losses which were almost inevitable. But of Hyperides we might reasonably have expected to have known more. Of above seventy orations bearing his name, which were in the hands of late Greek critics, at least fifty were judged to be genuine*. He was deemed worthy of a place among the chosen Ten. He was held second only to Demosthenes, and it was the opinion of one of his critics, that if his excellences were not weighed but numbered, he would deservedly be placed foremost in the ranks of Attic oratory f. Yet his easy and natural mode of handling a subject his ready half-careless flow of language, so inartistic as to offend the keen scent of later pedants, for whom the Athenians themselves were not sufficiently Attic his dexterity, his pathos, his elegant raillery, above all his inimitable grace, had hitherto been known to us only from a very brief fragment preserved in Stobeeus, or conjectured from the criticisms of Cicero, and Dionysius, and Longinus. Recent discovery has furnished us with materials for a more independent judgment. In the spring of 1847, A. C. Harris Esq. of Alexandria pur- chased some fragments of a papyrus roll from a dealer in anti- quities at Egyptian Thebes. On examination, the majority of these were found to form part of an oration against Demosthenes respecting the treasure of Harpalus, which Mr Harris correctly attributed to Hyperides. Three of the fragments however were evidently disconnected in subject from the rest. The authenti- city of these writings has since been established beyond the reach of any reasonable doubt, from the citations in the lexico- graphers, and from the general style and subject-matter of the fragments themselves. A facsimile of the MS. was published in the autumn of 1848. Copies fell into the hands of MM. Boeckh and Sauppe, by whom the fragments were edited independently and almost simulta- TTVT7)K6vTa too. Pseudo-Plut. Vit. X. Att. Fragm. p. fj6. Oratt. p. 849, but others give the num- t Longinua de Subl. xxxiv. init.
 * i^o^i-fjKovTa ivri., ($v yv^triol el<rt bers differently. See Sauppe, Oratt.