The Tetralogies are artificial exercises illustrating different types of argument in homicide cases. Each has four speeches, two on each side, as in actual homicide cases.¹ Because the focus is on argument, the narrative portion is omitted or reduced to the minimum necessary to understand the case, and no witnesses are called to testify. The arguments can become rather complex, as each is answered by a counterargument, which is then answered in turn.

The issue of pollution for homicide is prominent in the prologues and epilogues of all three Tetralogies. Both sides argue that a killer is polluted and his...

The speechOn the Chorus Boywas delivered by an unknown Athenian who in 419 was assigned the important (and expensive) liturgy (Introduction, IVC) of training a boys’ chorus to compete at the Thargelia, a festival held in the late Spring. As the choregus (“chorus producer”), he recruited the fifty boys needed for the chorus, which represented two of the ten tribes, and provided room in his house for them to train. Being busy with his other affairs (so he tells us), he assigned the duty of training the boys to his son-in-law and three other men. One day during...

This speech is delivered by a young man who is prosecuting his stepmother for poisoning his father. She is defended by another son, the speaker’s half-brother.¹ The death occurred when the speaker was a boy (1.30); he must have turned eighteen, the minimum age for bringing a legal case, a few years earlier, because his younger half-brother must also have turned eighteen.

The “facts” are set forth in a vivid narrative (14–20), whose details must have come largely from the speaker’s imagination. There is no real evidence and little argument other than the allegation of an earlier attempt at...

Antiphon’s longest surviving speech,On the Murder of Herodes, was regarded in antiquity as one of his best. Modern commentators generally agree, noting the vividness of the narrative, the creativity of the arguments from probability, and the effectiveness of the procedural arguments. However, our ignorance on several important issues makes any assessment of the argument difficult. Being a defense speech, it can be selective in its narration of events, for the jurors would already have been given an account by the prosecution. The mixture of substantive and procedural issues also complicates any assessment.

The speech was delivered about a decade...

At first sight, this appears to be a speech about adultery,¹ but in fact the case concerns homicide. Euphiletus, the speaker, has killed Eratosthenes, who was in the act of committing adultery with his wife, and pleads that the killing was justified. Trials for justifiable homicide came before the court of the Delphinium, and it is possible (though not certain) that they were heard by a specialist panel of Ephetae, rather than by a regular dicastic court consisting of ordinary citizens selected by lot. As usual, we do not know the result of the case, but the speaker will be...

From antiquity until the present day,Against Cononhas been one of the favorite speeches of the Demosthenic corpus. Moderns are amused by its vivid portrayal of drunken brawling in an army camp and in the streets of Athens itself, as well as the other forms of shocking behavior the speaker describes. There is, moreover, much interest in the speaker’s discussion of the choices available to a man contemplating a lawsuit and his account of an arbitration hearing.

If we are to believe Ariston, the speaker, there was no enmity between himself and Conon until he had the bad luck...

Lysias 3 concerns a case of “wounding with premeditation (pronoia),” which apparently meant with the intention of killing, or what we might call attempted murder. This offense at Athens was subject to the same special procedural rules as murder itself (for which see the Introduction to Ant. 5). It is not clear on what substantive basis (if any) premeditated wounding was differentiated from simple assault, but there is a hint at 3.28 that possessing a weapon could be represented as a significant criterion.

Lysias 3 concerns a quarrel and a series of fights arising out of disputed possession of a...

It is commonly believed that the beginning of this speech, which would have contained the narrative of events, has been lost. But it is possible that the speaker, who makes a point of his poverty, was able to afford only this short, prepared speech. The testimony of witnesses, together with his own improvised connecting comments, may have provided the bulk of the narrative. The function of this text, then, was only to underline the importance of the affair. The speaker seems to attempt to obscure whether the speech arose from agraphē hybreōs(a public suit forhybris, “wanton violence”)...

This speech revolves around the issue of Athenian citizenship. The stakes were very high: it is no exaggeration when in the opening section the speaker equates conviction with ruin, for he was to be sold into slavery if he lost the case (though at 57.65 it appears that an unsuccessful appellant might be expected to leave Attica before that happened).

A man named Euxitheus came before an Athenian court to appeal the decision of his deme, Halimus, to strike him from its official register of deme members. Although the trial arises from an appeal (ephesis), the deme takes the role...

The connection between Plataea and Athens has been discussed in the Introduction to Lysias 3 (above). In that speech there are incidental problems of interpretation arising from the status of Theodotus, the male prostitute who forms the object of the dispute and who does not appear to be an Athenian citizen, even though he seems unquestionably to be from Plataea.¹ In Lysias 23, on the other hand, the status of the speaker’s opponent Pancleon is central, in that he is evidently claiming to be an Athenian citizen by virtue of being a Plataean, a claim that the speaker is contesting....

The author of this speech is almost certainly Apollodorus, father-in-law (also brother-in-law) of the man who delivers the first sixteen sections. The style ofAgainst Neaerais repetitious and sprawling and shows other signs that the speech is not by Demosthenes himself. YetAgainst Neaeraholds exceptional interest for its picture of aspects of Athenian life seldom touched on with such detail in other texts. We see in particular howhetairai, deluxe prostitutes, played a part in the erotic and public lives of many Athenians, some of them very prominent.

Prostitution itself was not a crime in Athens, and men...

In 346 an Athenian delegation, led by Philocrates and including Aeschines and Demosthenes, negotiated a peace treaty with Philip of Macedon. Although there was majority support for the peace, there remained elements in the city implacably and explicitly opposed either to the idea of peace with Macedonia or to the terms of the Peace of Philocrates. There were others, like Demosthenes, who saw the peace as a necessary but temporary arrangement. The opponents of the peace began working against it from the moment it was concluded. Aeschines was an early target. All Athenian officials had to submit to an audit...

Cleonymus¹ son of Polyarchus died childless, leaving his estate in a will to some relatives whose precise number and relationship to him cannot be determined.² The validity of the will was challenged in a rival claim (diadikasia) made by Cleonymus’ nephews, one of whom delivered the present speech. It is a possible, but by no means necessary, inference from remarks made by the speaker that the opponents were twice as many in number, since he claims that their friends and relatives thought the two parties deserved an equal share in the estate (1.2, 35; cf. 28), and that the nephews...

The brothers Eupolis, Mneson, and Thrasyllus I jointly inherited a large estate from their father, who was probably named Apollodorus, since both Eupolis and Thrasyllus so named their sons. Mneson died childless, and Thrasyllus died on the Sicilian expedition of 415–413, leaving a son, Apollodorus II, who was a minor and therefore came under the guardianship of his uncle, Eupolis. According to the speaker, Eupolis misappropriated the whole of Mneson’s estate, half of which belonged by law to Apollodorus, and embezzled his nephew’s property. Meanwhile, Apollodorus’ mother had remarried, and her second husband, Archedamus, brought him up in his...

Ciron I died at an advanced age (8.37), leaving a daughter but no son. The daughter (according to the speaker) was the child of his first marriage to his first cousin, the daughter of his mother’s sister. This wife died after four years (7); their daughter was married first and without issue to Nausimenes of Cholargus and then, after his death, to an unnamed husband (also deceased) by whom she had two sons, the elder of whom is the speaker (8, 31, 36). Ciron’s second marriage was to the half-sister of Diocles of Phlya, who survived him, but their two...

Lysias 32 is not found in the mediaeval manuscripts of Lysias, but it is quoted (with two other speeches) by the rhetorical theorist Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his essayOn Lysiasas an example of Lysias’ style.¹ As cited by Dionysius, the text consists of the introduction, the narrative, and part of the proof section. At issue is a private lawsuit dealing with guardianship, which has been brought before a dicastic court by an orphan² who has recently become an adult: his brother-in-law (speaking on the young man’s behalf because of the latter’s inexperience) alleges that the estate has been...

Like Lysias 32, this case involves a suit against guardians for mismanagement of an estate. Demosthenes’ father (also named Demosthenes) died in 376, leaving a large estate for his only son, then age seven. He appointed three guardians to manage the estate: Aphobus, Demophon, and Therippides. He also directed his wife, Cleobule, to marry Aphobus and his daughter to marry Demophon when she was old enough, and he provided a substantial dowry for each. When the younger Demosthenes came of age, however, he received only a small fraction of the estate’s original value, although (he claims) it should have increased...

We cannot date this speech, and we know nothing about the people involved in this dispute beyond what is in the text, not even the name of the speaker. Nevertheless, the speech is interesting for its portrayal of a quarrel that flared between neighboring families over difficulties faced by Attic farmers working steep slopes subject to occasional torrential rainstorms. We have evidence in this speech both for the private exchanges of the neighbors, first cordial, then rancorous, and for their turn to litigation to settle, or perhaps to protract, the dispute.

The speaker assumes that the jury is familiar with...

Like all of Hyperides’ surviving speeches, this speech was not preserved in manuscripts, as were all the other speeches in this volume, but in fragments of an ancient papyrus discovered in Egypt in the late nineteenth century. The text thus has quite a few gaps, and some of the restored words represent only the gist of the original speech. The speech was noted by ancient critics particularly for its artistic merits, and what remains of it certainly does not disappoint. It shows that gift of characterization, wit, and charm that made Hyperides famous.

This was the plaintiff’s first speech at...

This case is probably a scrutiny (dokimasia).¹ The use ofdokimasiato examine the qualifications of those who have been appointed to public office is common in the speeches of Lysias,² but in this instance the issue is not an office but a privilege, specifically, a disability pension. Neither the speaker (who is defending his right to continuance of his pension) nor his opponent is named, and there are no indications of date except for a reference back to the speaker’s actions at the time of the hirty in 404/3, which would fit a date for the speech at any...

The defendant in this case, Pasion, is the most famous banker (trapezitēs) of classical Athens. A former slave, he was also the father of Apollodorus, the author of several speeches later included with those of Demosthenes, including Demosthenes 59 (see Trevett 1992). The acrimony into which this case must have brought Pasion apparently did no serious or long-term damage to his professional reputation. In time, he would even be granted citizenship for service to Athens. He died in 370/69. The prosecutor is a young man from the Bosporus (now the Crimea in southern Ukraine), whose father, Sopaeus, was very close...

Lacritus originally came from Phaselis in Asia Minor, but at the time of this speech he was living in Athens, where he must have been registered as a metic (resident alien). He was a rhetorician; he had been a pupil of Isocrates and taught rhetoric himself (15, 41). Little else is known about him. His opponent, the speaker, was an Athenian named Androcles son of Xeinis of Sphettus. He is known from two inscriptions, and his brother Xenocles from a larger number, to have performed liturgies and other financial business; both brothers were probably affluent and prominent figures.¹

The date...