Year: 1976
Type: article
Abstract: Dover argues that H among the speeches ascribed toLysias by the booksellers many, perhaps the majority, were to some degree or other his work, but not wholly his work."!The discussion 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 thereafter to include the circumstances of ancient publication and the popular 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, however, 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 omission 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.cpocconfirms his literary pretensions.Nowhere is he found cooperating with anyone 5 but works alone on his writings, whether they be history, forensic speeches or epideictic discourses.
Author: S. Usher
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1549718139