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Four hundred and twenty-five orations attributed to him are current. Of these Dionysius and Caecilius and their school say that two hundred and thirtythree are genuine, and he is said to have lost his case with only two of them. There is also his speech in support of the enactment against which Archinus brought suit and deprived him of citizenship, and another against the Thirty. He was very persuasive and concise and produced most of his speeches for private clients. There are also Textbooks of Rhetoric prepared by him, and Public Addresses, Letters and Eulogies, Funeral Speeches, Love Speeches, and a Defence of Socrates addressed to the judges.Cicero, De Oratore, i. 231, and Diogenes Laertius, ii. 20, 40, say that Lysias composed an oration in defence of Socrates, and offered it to him, but Socrates refused it. A speech in defence of Socrates (ὑπερ Σωκράτους πρὸς Πολυκράτην) is mentioned several times by the scholiast on Aristeides. It was composed probably some years after the death of Socrates, as an epideictic oration in reply to a similar speech against Socrates by the sophist Polycrates. This is doubtless the speech which Cicero and Diogenes wrongly believed to have been composed for use in the actual trial of Socrates. See Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, 2nd ed., i. p. 351. In the matter of his diction he appears to be easy, although in fact he is hard to imitate. Cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ἀρχαίων κρίσις, v. 1 ὡς ἀναγιγνωσκόμενον μὲν εὔκολον νομίζεσυαι χαλεπὸν δὲ εὑρίσκεσθαι ζηλοῦν πειρωμένοις, when read he is considered easy, but is found to be difficult by any who try to imitate him. Demosthenes in his speech against NeaeraDemosthenes, Or. lix. 21. says that he was in love with Metaneira, a fellow-slave with Neaera; but later he married the daughter of his brother Brachyllus. Plato also mentions him in the Phaedrus Plato, Phaedrus, 279 a. as an able speaker and older than Isocrates. Moreover Philiscus, a pupil of Isocrates and comrade of Lysias, composed an elegiac poem to him, from which it is plain that he was earlier in years, which is indicated also by what Plato said. The verses are as follows: Now, O Calliope’s daughter endowed with great eloquence, Phrontis, Show if thy wisdom is aught, if thou hast anything new. Him who is altered and changed to another form, him who in other Orders and manners of life hath a new body assumed, Thou must bring forth some herald of virtue to celebrate: LysisLysis, because the word Lysias is inadmissible in the Greek metre. Wyttenbach suggests that the verses were really written in honour of Lysis the Pythagorean. Gone to the dead and the gloom, there an immortal to dwell; One who will show unto all the love of my soul for my comrade, Show, too, the worth of the dead unto the whole of mankind.Bergk, Poet. Lyr Graec. ii. p. 640. Bergk rightly says that this is only part of a longer poem. The fragment does not indicate that Lysias was older than Isocrates, but some such statement may have been contained in a later part of the poem. He also wrote two speeches for Iphicrates, one against Harmodius, the other for use in accusing Timotheüs of treason, with both of which he won his case; but when Iphicrates accepted the responsibility for the actions of Timotheüs,In 355 b.c. Iphicrates and Timotheüs, Athenian generals who had been unsuccessful, were accused by their colleague, Chares, of treason. Although Iphicrates accepted full responsibility, he was acquitted, but Timotheüs was fined one hundred talents, which he could not pay. He left Athens and soon died. assuming at the rendering of accounts the accusation for treason, he defended himself with the speech by Lysias; and he himself was acquitted, but Timotheüs was very heavily fined. And at the Olympic festival also he read a very great oration urging that the Greeks make peace with one another and overthrow Dionysius.Only a fragment (Or. xxxiii.) of this is extant.
