Lysias and his Clients Usher, S Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1976; 17, 1; ProQuest pg. 31

Lysias and his Clients 
s. Usher 

I N THE EIGHTH CHAPTER of his book Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum, 
Professor K. J. Dover argues that H among the speeches ascribed to 

Lysias by the booksellers many, perhaps the majority, were to 
some degree or other his work, but not wholly his work."! The dis­
cussion which precedes this proposition is concerned chiefly with the 
relationship between a litigant and his cVJL{3ovAoc (,consultant'), a 
role which no ancient authority assigns to Lysias. It broadens there­
after to include the circumstances of ancient publication and the popu­
lar Athenian attitude to the profession of Aoyoypd.cpoc, and Dover's 
treatment of these two subjects is lucid and convincing in so far as it is 
concerned with general conditions. It is to some extent vitiated, how­
ever, by the repeated assumption that clients,2 and even friends of 
clients,3 might have had strong motives for publishing forensic 
speeches after their use in trials. But far more serious is Dover's omis­
sion of the direct evidence for the independent composition of forensic 
speeches by the speechwriter. It is the purpose of the present article to 

reexamine this evidence, and to adduce fresh evidence and arguments 
in support of independent and against composite authorship. 

We may usefully begin with the words employed in the fifth and 
fourth centuries B.C. to describe the function of the speechwriter. By 
far the commonest verb appears to be ypd.CPELV. The others are 
1TapaCKEVd.~ELV, 1Topt~EcOaL, Wf)xavacOaL, 1TOLEiv, EKSL8t)vaL. None of these 
implies cooperation, nor do the two compound verbs cVyypd.CPELV and 
CVVTd.TTELV, in which the prefix cvv- bears the sense not of collaboration 
but of artistic composition.! Examination of the noun Aoyoypd.cpoc con­
firms his literary pretensions. Nowhere is he found cooperating with 
anyone5 but works alone on his writings, whether they be history, 
forensic speeches or epideictic discourses. 

1 Sather Lectures 39 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1968) 152 (hereafter, DOVER). 

:.I Dover 156, 160, 165. 
3 Dover 159. 
'For references see M. Lavency, Aspects de La Logographie judiciaire attique (Louvain 1964) 

34,124-29. 
Ii See Lavency, op.cit. (supra n.4) 36-45. 

31 



32 LYSIAS AND HIS CLIENTS 

Contemporary evidence of a different kind arises from a compari­
son between Lysias and his older contemporary Antiphon. Dover 
refers to Thucydides' famous tribute (8.68) and suggests, very reason­
ably, that the role here ascribed to Antiphon by the historian is that of 
ctSfLfJov'AoC.6 This and the passage which Dover quotes from Aris­
tophanes' Clouds (462-75) illustrate very well the confusion that 
existed in the fifth century between the nascent profession of speech­
writer and the other activities that came within the purview of the 
sophists. There is good reason to suppose that Antiphon acted as con­
sultant to litigants who shared his political beliefs, or whose cases 
might further his political aims by discrediting the democratic ad­
ministration which he sought to overthrow. But he also wrote 
speeches for the lawcourts and subsequently published them, being 
the first to do so according to tradition.7 His three surviving speeches8 

show none of the stylistic inconsistencies noticed in the speeches of 
Lysias by Dover and adduced as evidence of composite authorship, 
and it has never been suggested that he collaborated with his client 
in the composition of a speech. He offered two distinct forms of legal 
assistance, and two only: advice and the complete speech, ready for 
delivery. If Dover's thesis is accepted, Lysias offered neither of these 
but something in between, and in so doing lost his individual identity 
as a writer and broke with the precedent established by Antiphon. 

Such ready self-effacement is hardly consonant with the impression 
of the talents and reputation of Lysias which we receive from Plato in 
the Phaedrus. In this dialogue he is described as S€tvo-rcx-roc -rwv vVv 
'Ypacp€tv, sharply contrasted with the lSu!""1C, the ordinary man (228A). 
He is a creative literary artist comparable with the poets (258D, 278c). 
Although the Lysianic speech which he analyses is epideictic, plato 
acknowledges the breadth of Lysias' literary field by mentioning his 
activities as a forensic and political speechwriter, which had been the 
object of a jibe by a contemporary (257B-258B, esp. 257c). Ability to 
write in a variety of styles would be part of such a versatile author's 
stock-in-trade. While primarily a forensic speechwriter, Lysias was 
famous enough as an epideictic orator to have commanded an 
audience at Olympia in 388/7 B.C. for his remarkable invective against 

6 Dover 149. 
7 Diod.Sic ap. Clem.Alex. Strom. 1,365; [plut.] Vit.X Or. 832c-D; Quint. 3.1.11. 
8 Murder of Herodes, On the Choreutes, Prosecution for Poisoning. I regard the Tetralogies as 

rhetorical exercises of doubtful authorship. 



S. USHER 33 

Dionysius I of Syracuse.9 In a writer of such protean talents stylistic 
variety is much more naturally explained in purely literary terms 
than by any assumption that he allowed an alien, uncultivated style 
to intrude into his compositions. 

Plato, then, recognized Lysias' versatility, perhaps even as a talent 
kindred to his own. But he also must have thought that he could dis­
tinguish a Lysianic style, in order either to imitate it, if the Eroticus is 
by Plato, or to select an authentic work of the orator, if the Eroticus is 
by Lysias.10 Assumption of Platonic authorship leads us to examine 
the piece for recurrent features which Plato may have regarded as 
Lysianic traits. The five occurrences of Kat /Ltv 8~ (26 in the Corpus 
Lysiacum) and the two of €'n 8€ (24 in the Corpus Lysiacum), may be the 
result of Plato's study of a body of speeches and discourses which 
were, in his judgement, clearly stamped with one man's style. 

Two generations after Plato, Theophrastus also thought he could 
identify the style of Lysias. It is interesting to note that he emphasised 
its artificiality, and included the orator among those who made ex­
cessive use of antithesis, symmetry, assonance and related figures of 
language (Dion.Hal. Lys. 14). This is surely a surprising judgement if 
the speeches read by Theophrastus contained passages of any length 
written in the natural language of Lysias' clients. Dionysius, on the 
other hand, did see an element of apparent naturalness in Lysias' 
style, but considered that it was in reality as different as could be from 
the style of the ordinary man, and more carefully contrived than any 
work of art (Lys. 8). It was by these criteria that he, like his predeces­
sors, identified an individual Lysianic style, and he saw in it too a 
certain indefinable XaPLC (Lys. 10), absence of which he confidently 
took to be a sign of non-Lysianic authorship. 

Contemporary evidence and subsequent critical opinion thus give 

II Dion.Hal. Lys. 29; Diod.Sic. 14.109. 
10 Blass deduced Lysianic authorship from both style and method of argument (Att.Ber. 

I. 428-30), and the case was argued at greater length by J. Vahlen COber die Rede des 
Lysias in Platos Phaedrus," SitzBerl 1903.2, pp.788ff). But since H. Weinstock's thorough 
investigation De erotico Lysiaco (Westfalen 1912), scholarly opinion has generally favoured 
Platonic authorship. See A. C. Darkow, The Spurious Speeches in the Lysianic Corpus (diss. 
Bryn Mawr 1917) 90-94; P. Shorey, "On the Eroticus of Lysias in Plato's Phaedrus." CP 28 

(1933) 131-32; G. E. DimockJr, "'A,u& in Lysias and Plato's Phaedrus," AJP 73 (1952) 392-96. 
Dover (194) considers the problem insoluble by means of "technical criteria," but this 
excludes perhaps the strongest argument of all, that of literary unity and the convention 
that authors did not quote verbatim long passages from the works of others. This argument 
is not without relevance to the subject of this article. 



34 L YSIAS AND I-llS CLIENTS 

an impression of Lysias and his oratory which does not correspond 
with that suggested by Dover's thesis of a composer of hybrid works 
in which any literary distinction is diluted and obscured by the intru­
sion of l8('wTLCJLOt, the uncultivated speech of his clients. We shall have 
occasion to return to the question of Lysias' literary reputation but 
turn now to two passages which describe the relationship between the 
speechwriter and his client in the fourth century B.C. The first con­
cerns Lysias himself, and though our source is Plutarch, there is no 
good reason to believe that he was not following a biographical tradi­
tion dating back at least to the third century B.C. (Hermippus of 
Smyrna ?).11 The passage runs as follows: 

A ' , ~, " \ , '.1. ""- • "-' \ \ , VCLac 7"LVL DUC7JV EXOVTL I\OYOV cvyypa'f'ac EDWKEV' 0 DE 7TOl\I\aKLC 

~ \ l' "" A ' 'f) - \ \ , "" -avayvovc ?JKE 7TpOC 7"OV VCLav a VJLWV KaL I\EyWV 7"0 JLEV 7TPW7"OV 
, - <;:, c' f} '.I..~.::; '\ , 1'f} <;:, , , , aV7"lp DLE~LOVTL aVJLac7"OV 'f""'"",vaL 7"OV I\oyov, av LC DE Kat 7"pLTOV 

eXvaAaJLfi&vOV7"L 7TavTEAWC eXJL{3AvV Ka~ CX7TpaK7"Ov' 0 8~ Avclac 
, I t'C',.,.".,. rr," i: 1\ \ \ , ,,,, " 

yEl\acac 7"L ovv, Et7TEV, oVX a7Tas JLEI\I\ELC I\EyELV av7"OV E7Tt. 

7"WV 8LKacTwv;"12 

This curious story seems to imply a lack of collaboration between 
speechwriter and client in the actual composition of the speech, how­
ever much prior consultation there may have been. Clearly the client 
received and read a speech written by the speechwriter. But his dis­
appointment may suggest something more. If the speech had con­
tained a number of passages in the client's own words, it would have 
been natural for his self-esteem to gain the better of his literary judge­
ment, so that he might have enjoyed reading the speech simply 
because he saw his own words <in print'. Again, if, as is reasonable, he 
is assumed to have reread the speech with the ultimate purpose of 
learning it off by heart,13 part of his complaint may have arisen from 
finding its language totally foreign to his own and therefore awkward 
and unnatural coming from the lips of a man with no experience of 
acting a part. At the very least, it is evident that the client recognized 
the speech as the work of the speechwriter, not as a collaborative 
composition. 

11 The unreliability of Hermippus and other sources of biographical material need not 
lead us to expect them to misrepresent a relationship such as that between speechwriter 
and client, which was a matter of recent, perhaps contemporary experience for some of 
them. For purposes of the present argument it does not matter greatly whether Plutarch 
or his source introduced Lysias' name in order to colour the story. 

12 Pluto De Garr. 5 (Mor. 504c). 13 Dover 150 n.4. 



S. USHER 35 

The second passage does not feature Lysias in person, but its author 
Theophrastus is closer in time than Plutarch to the heyday of the 
Attic speechwriters and was indeed a contemporary of the later ones. 
In Characters 17.8 we read of a litigant who, on winning his suit with 
all the jury's votes, criticizes his speechwriter for omitting many 
legitimate points. A purely fictitious incident, no doubt; but hardly 
one which could not have happened, or its inclusion would have served 
the purpose neither of illustration nor of humour. If, as seems prob­
able, Theophrastus is describing the habitual practice of the speech­
writer, it may be supposed that in some cases consultation was 
minimal even on legal details, rendering it less likely still that matters 
of verbal presentation were discussed and agreed upon between 
speechwriter and client. 

Nowhere in ancient literature does a contrary account of the speech­
writer-client relationship appear. Indeed, there is a further passage 
which may seem to confirm what those ofTheophrastus and Plutarch 
imply. Cicero tells us that Lysias composed a defence-speech for 
Socrates and offered it to him "to learn for use at his trial," quam 
edisceret ut pro se in iudicio uteretur (De Oratore 1.231), but Socrates 
politely declined the offer on the ground that its elegant style did not 
suit his character. Here we have an exceptional case of a speechwriter 
volunteering his services gratuitously and writing a speech without 
prior consultation with the litigant. DoverH relates this story aetiolog­
ically to the subsequent existence of a Lysianic Defence of Socrates. It 
was apparently written in the orator's epideictic style, which no doubt 
gave rise to controversy as to whether it was actually delivered. Un­
scrupulous booksellers might affirm that it was, making it necessary 
for Socrates' adherents to invent the story in order to set the overall 
record straight and reestablish the tradition that Socrates conducted 
his own defence in his own unorthodox way. This is not the only 
possible explanation of the origin of the story, however. It should not 
have seemed necessary to fabricate it merely in order to explain the 
existence of an epideictic defence of Socrates in the fourth century, 
for his trial was the subject of numerous serious tracts, pamphlets and 
rhetorical exercises, not to mention the dialogues of Plato. It is there­
fore quite possible that an original story that Socrates was offered 
speech(es) for use at his trial by speechwriter(s) came into existence 

14 Dover 192. 



36 LYSIAS AND HIS CLIENTS 

independently of the appearance of a Lysianic15 defence, which served 
to personalise the story and add to its colour. We may believe that 
there were exceptional cases when speechwriters offered their services 
to litigants, especially when their own political convictions or am­
bitions impelled them to do so. It is possible, without overrating 
Lysias' political pretensions, to envisage such a context for a number 
of his speeches, e.g. Against Agoratus, Against Alcibiades I and II, and the 
Defence on a Charge of Treason (Or. 25). In these, political flavour is 
combined with stylistic unity in a high degree. 

With the aid of the foregoing evidence we may begin to form a 
coherent account of the probable procedure followed by Attic forensic 
orators when composing speeches for their clients. After initial con­
sultation, which would vary in thoroughness according to the com­
plexity or difficulty of the case, the actual composition of the speech 
was done by the speechwriter,I6 in his own words and with the exact 
degree of emphasis and emotional appeal that he considered neces­
sary. The client then took the speech and learnt it off by heart17 if he 
could, though it seems unlikely that a litigant who was unfortunate 
enough to have a poor memory and! or a nervous disposition was 
required to speak from memory and so place himself at a disadvan­
tage.IS However he chose to deliver his speech, the ordinary litigant 
was supplied by his speechwriter with various commonplace pleas, 
contrasting his own in experience, innocent unpreparedness and retir­
ing character with the perverted cleverness, long-standing malice and 
litigiousness of his opponent, and so preempting the sympathy and 
indulgence of a jury which contained many citizens like himself. For 
his part, a speechwriter with literary talents and consciousness of a 
reading public, like Lysias,1D would naturally prefer to compose a 

15 Tradition, and especially biographical tradition, abhors anonymity. Lysias' name could 
have been superscribed to the anonymous Defence any time after his epideictic style had 
become familiar through the publication of speeches like the Olympiacus. Cf. supra n.ll. 

18 There can be little doubt that forensic speeches were written out in full. See Isoc. 
Paneg. 188; Amid. 1,46; Panath. 1-2,271. 

17 See Ar. Eq. 347-50, and H. Hudson-Williams, "Political Speeches in Athens," CQ N.S. 

1 (1951) 68-69. 
18 Memorisation played an important part in ancient education. and general standards 

were probably higher than they are today. But Alcidamas refers to it as a difficult and bur­
densome exercise (Soph. 18). and we know of one famous case in which a very experienced 
politician <dried up' (Demosthenes on the first embassy to Philip, according to Aeschin. 
2.34-35). 

18 See below. pp. 37-38. 



S. USHER 37 

speech in a self-consistent style and to use his own judgement as to 
the form and degree of characterisation demanded by the case. 

Dover observes correctly that the needs and abilities of litigants 
varied,20 so that those with confidence or experience in legal matters 
or public speaking did not require the fullest available services of the 
speechwriter. But discussion of the Corpus Lysiacum centres around the 
published speeches, and even if Dover's thesis of collaborative composi­
tion is accepted, for some speeches the crucial€lK6c-question must still 
be asked: from the cases in which Lysias was consulted, which 
speeches is he likely to have prepared for publication as specimens of 
his professional and literary skill, those which he composed himself in 
their entirety or those which contained varying contributions from 
his clients? The answer should be obvious, but we cannot be sure that 
all the speeches in the corpus were chosen and prepared for publica­
tion by Lysias. It should be possible, however, to assert that Hprobably 
the majority" were, if some evidence could be adduced to show that 
Lysias, or any other orator, was able to exercise effective supervision 
over the publication of speeches under his name. To this evidence we 
now turn. 

If it is accepted, as I think it must be, that Lysias established himself 
as a writer on rhetorical theory, whether through the media of tech­
nical treatises,21 exercises22 or a wide range of display pieces,23 it may 
be confidently assumed not only that readers would be anxious to 
obtain copies of his works and hence have a direct interest in their 
genuineness,24 but that the orator, in order to increase his reputation 
and widen his clientele, would actively promote a market for his 
speeches, concentrating in the case of forensic speeches on those which 
were successfu1.25 Epideictic speeches by famous orators of the period 
were certainly distributed among their pupils and admirers,26 and 
there is no evidence to suggest that forensic speeches were held in 

20 Dover 150. 
21 [plut.] Vit.X Or. 836B: Eld 0' av-rcjJ Kal P7JTOPLKd TEXVaL 1TE1roL7Jl.JivaL ••• 
22 Schol. Hermog. Walz IV 352,5. Blass, op.cit. (supra n.IO) 382, points out that the topic 

here mentioned is treated by Lysias in 24.15, and may therefore have been drawn by him 
from one of his already published 'TTapaCKEval. 

23 Dion.Hal. L ys. I: 1TAE{CTOVC O€ ypa.pac AOYOVC Elc oLKacT~fJl.a TE Kat fJovM.c Kat 'TTpOC 
€KKA"1clac EVe/TOVC, 'TTpOC o~ TOVTotC '7TavrrYVP'KOlic, €PWT'KO,$C, €7TLCTO)uKO,$C. 

24 Dover 153, 159. 
25 Lysias is said to have lost in only two of his published speeches ([Plut.] Vlt.X Or. 836A). 

28 See E. G. Turner, Athenian Books in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C. (London 1952) 19. 



38 LYSIAS AND I-llS CLIENTS 

lower esteem: on the contrary, those by reputable authors were con­
sidered desirable reading for any man who wished to make his mark 
in public life.27 The same conditions obtained in the matter of distri­
bution for forensic as for epideictic speeches, so that when Isocrates 
says of his own speech Against the Sophists ~6yov 8d8wKa ypmpac (Antid. 
193), Turner deduces very reasonably that "The author in person 
supervises the circulation of his work."28 We have no cause to believe 
that others who relied on their literary talents for their livelihood 
were less vigilant than he was in guarding their reputations. 

An interesting illustration of the extent to which an author could 
influence opinion regarding his literary output is supplied, once more 
by Isocrates, who appears to have succeeded in disowning a large 
number of forensic speeches which he wrote early in his career.29 If 
Isocrates could do this in the case of speeches which he may actually 
have written, Lysias should have had an easier task in disowning 
speeches which he did not compose. Another reason for supposing 
Isocrates' task to have been the more difficult is that we know he had 
many detractors, against whom he spoke at length in his early dis­
courses and in the Antidosis, some of whom tried to discredit him by 
drawing attention to his early career as a speechwriter. We know 
nothing, however, about contemporary imitators of Lysias who tried 
to pass off their work as his, but we can be sure that their task would 
have been rendered the more difficult by his reputation and a dis­
cerning literary public. 

As to his choice of speeches for publication, those which would dis­
play his art in its most favourable light would be speeches on difficult 
cases for obscure c1ients30 who were inexperienced or diffident or 
both.sI Examples of such speeches are easy to find in the Corpus Lysia­
cum. By publishing speeches of this kind Lysias might have expected to 
attract clients of all kinds. 

A further consideration arises from the publication of forensic 

17 The fact is deplored by Isocrates (Paneg. 11). See C. Kennedy. The Art of Persuasion in 
Greece (Princeton and London 1963) 34; Dover 182-83. 

28 op.cit. (supra n.26) 20. 

28 Antid. 36. His attitude gave rise to the famous controversy involving Aristotle, described 
by Dion.Hal. Isoc. 18. See Dover 25. 

30 Dion.Hai. Lys. 16: &P.£{IIWV iCT~ ora fUKpa Ka~ 'ITap&&ga Ka~ rt'ITopa £l'IT£III K(X.\WC. 

31 It is an interesting question whether the large number of clients who claim inexperi­
ence or display diffidence are merely using commonplace pleas, or whether this large 
number is the result of the orator's choice of speeches for publication. 



S. USHER 39 

speeches. To what extent were they revised and retouched before 
publication? An extreme view of this question was advanced by 
Darkow, who, in her examination of individual Lysianic speeches, 
emphasised the characteristics which rendered them unsuitable for 
delivery in court, and regarded the published speeches as purely 
epideictic in character. She even went so far as to suggest that '"Lysias 
and indeed all the orators of the canon were not AO'Y07T'OLOt in the sense 
of professional speechwrights. They were the real representatives of 
a -rlxV'Y} behind which all speech mongers sheltered themselves."32 
Although arrival at this conclusion entails an intolerably narrow and 
tendentious interpretation of the evidence, it is undoubtedly true that 
certain of the speeches contain strong epideictic elements, and it is 
arguable that the short fragments of speeches which found their way 
into the corpus did so because of their literary interest. If the orator 
revised his speeches before publication, his own part in their com­
position was thereby enhanced, and his client's, if he had any at all, 
diminished. 

These arguments against composite authorship in the published 
speeches of Lysias receive internal confirmation from the passages of 
live speech which occur in them. In live speech, if anywhere, the 
orator might be expected to have allowed his clients to speak in their 
own words. The first fact which should surprise the proponents of 
composite authorship is that live speech, i.e. the quotation of the actual 
words alleged to have been used in a conversation, argument or 
harangue, is rare in Lysias, and this is one of the characteristics which 
makes him less of a <natural' orator, than for example, Andocides and 
Aeschines. More interesting, however, is the fact that when live speech 
is used by Lysias, it tends to have a certain stiff formality, which may 
even contrast with the more relaxed style of the surrounding narra­
tive. I have drawn attention to this peculiarity elsewhere33 in refer­
ence to passages of oratio recta in The Slaying of Eratosthenes, where this 
strange formality is particularly striking. Another example, in which 
rhetorical resources are deployed most effectively, is the powerful 
harangue put into the mouth ofDiodotus' widow in the speech Against 
Diogeiton (15-17), which must rank as one of the finest pieces of female 
Athenian oratory outside Aristophanes, though it is scarcely credible 
for its realism. Lysias, having no doubt received a verbal account of 

32 Darkow, op.cit. (supra n.lO) 17. 
33 Eranos 63 (1965) 104-05. 



40 LYSIAS AND I-llS CLIENTS 

the widow's harangue from his client, converted it into a highly 
polished tour de force which presents the 'rhetoric of the situation' 
with the maximum of emotional appeal. In this as in other aspects of 
our study of Lysias we are impressed more by his conscious literary 
artistry than by his naturalism. 

Dover's hypothesis would have surprised Dionysius and Plutarch 
and astounded Plato. Taking literary unity as a basic assumption, they 
would have explained the realism and variety of style which they 
found in the Lysianic speeches in terms not of composite authorship 
but of the writer's own talents, whether innate or cultivated. The fore­
going investigation suggests that we should follow their example. It 
seems inconceivable that they could have misunderstood the literary 
habits of their own age. On the historical side of the question, it seems 
clear that the speechwriter-client relationship was more clear-cut than 
Dover requires us to believe, and that the publication and transmis­
sion of speeches was probably less haphazard. And finally, since it 
casts doubt upon the authenticity of all Attic oratory, not only the 
Corpus Lysiacum, the study is as yet incomplete and Lysias should not 
be singled out. 

ROYAL HOLLOWAY COLLBGB, UNIVBRS1TY OF LONDON 

September, 1975