Lysias 25 and the Intractable Democratic Abuses Author(s): T. M. Murphy Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 113, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 543-558 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/295539 Accessed: 09-06-2015 19:04 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Journal of Philology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.83.205.78 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 19:04:41 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LYSIAS 25 AND THE INTRACTABLE DEMOCRATIC ABUSES Nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators of Lysias have more widely disagreed on the persona sustained by an anonymous member of the City faction1 in Or. 25, "Defense against a Charge of Subverting the Democracy," than on that given any other "speaker" in the Lysianic corpus.2 K. J. Dover found in this figure (whom I will call X) a "distinctive" individual characterization3 but questioned whether Or. 25 could have been intended for delivery before a democratic court: "In this case the grounds for suspicion are the high level of generalisa- tion maintained throughout the speech, the intellectual aloofness of the argument in 8-11, and the assurance of the inimical tone adopted in 25 towards certain individuals prominent in the closing years of the war."4 However, though the likely date of composition can be set within nar- row limits, Dover makes no effort to evoke the conditions which would have made delivery impossible or unlikely in spite of the fact that Athe- nian courts historically entertained issues more controversial than any raised in this speech.5 I hope to show the point of the "aloofness" and 'For a recent discussion of such key political terms as 'faction,' 'group,' 'ten- dency,' and 'party' and of their uses to describe the shifting, combative alignments of fifth- and fourth-century B.C. Athenian political life, see Barry Strauss, Athens after the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction, and Policy 403-386 B.C. (London and Sydney 1986) 11-36. I am persuaded by Strauss's argument for 'faction' (27-28) as the best term in that it gives due emphasis to the importance of the individual leader without excluding consid- erations of policy, class, and economic interest. 2E Blass, Die Attische Beredsamkeit2 I (Leipzig 1887) 515; P. Dobree, Adversaria I (Berlin 1831) 247; R. Rauchenstein, Ausgewdhlte Reden des Lysias I (Berlin 1848; rpr. Berlin 1963) 64; R. Jebb, The Attic Orators I (London 1876) 254; W. DeVries, A Rhetorical Study of the Types of Character in the Orations of Lysias (Baltimore 1892) 28; C. Adams, Lysias: Selected Speeches (London 1905; rpr. Norman, Okla. 1976) 260; P. Cloche, La restauration democratique d Athenes en 403 avant J.-C. (Paris 1915) 387-94; I. Bruns, Das literarische Portrat der Griechen im funften und vierten Jahrhundert vor Christi Geburt (Berlin 1896; rpr. Hildesheim 1961) 451. 3K. J. Dover, Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum (Berkeley 1968) 78: "Personally I find the speaker of xxv the most distinctive, but he has not seemed so to others . who have studied ethos in the orators." Cf. S. Usher, "Individual Characterisation in Lysias," Eranos 63 (1965) 119, n. 136. 4Dover (note 3 above) 188. See note 11 below. 5According to Lys. 34 (preserved D. H. Lys. 31-33), a proposal of Phormisius to restrict the franchise to property owners was introduced shortly after the restoration: in American Journal of Philology 113 (1992) 543-558 ? 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press This content downloaded from 128.83.205.78 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 19:04:41 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 544 T. M. MURPHY argue that Dover has not recognized the role of generalization in the speech. Dover's view exemplifies a serious deficiency in previous studies, their failure to relate Or. 25's rhetorical strategy to political conditions at the time of composition. The result has been the ascription by schol- ars of now this, now that individual or "dramatic" character to X where none is to be found.6 The speech, I argue, is a deliberation on Athenian public policy. Although it addresses the case of an individual, X offers a defense which covers in effect the entire City faction, rather than him- self alone, and which proclaims a policy of expediency not just for himself but for his long-suffering faction as well. He therefore needs and is given only a generalized political persona. The result is a forensic speech whose content is properly deliberative in the technical sense.7 In undertaking this analysis my aim has not been, in the first instance, to uncover the "true" political motivation of the anonymous "speaker" or to determine his guilt or innocence of the charges against him. I have primarily tried to examine his social and political "image," as projected in the speech written for him, on the assumption that this image was intended by its author to appeal to the political awareness of its audience. X invites the court to consider the past decade of catastrophic stasis in Athens as the work of an organized system of malfeasance and corruption, namely, the radical democracy; under it the relations of haves and have-nots have grown increasingly strained, with profit only to the sykophantai (24, 32, 34). Comparison of the speech with Ps.- Xenophon's Athenaion Politeia and the speech of Diodotus in Thucydi- des exposes X's political posture as that of a disaffected aristocrat con- ventionally claiming intellectual ascendancy over the democratic rank and file and moral ascendancy over current leaders of the restored de- this a life-or-death issue was at stake for radical democracy. Whether Lys. 34 was deliv- ered or not, the proposal itself is unlikely to have been fabricated by the speechwriter; see C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford 1952; rpr. 1970) 296-97; Cloch6 (note 2 above) 420. 6 By 'individual characterization' I mean those qualities of literary portrayal which seemingly discover to us a distinct individual rather than a type. To discuss individual characterization in this sense, Dionysius (Lys. 7, 9, respectively) uses the terms enargeia ('vividness') and prepon ('propriety'); see C. Carey, Lysias: Selected Speeches (Cam- bridge 1989) 10, n. 49. 7That is, concerned with the expedient, bearing on the future, hortatory; cf. Arist. Rh. 1.3.3-6. This content downloaded from 128.83.205.78 on Tue, 09 Jun 2015 19:04:41 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LYSIAS 25 AND THE INTRACTABLE DEMOCRATIC ABUSES 545 mocracy. Contemporary evidence bearing on the gradual nature of the restoration to full radical democracy and, in particular, on the balance of factions in the impoverished Athenian state is scarce and of uneven reliability. It is my hope to have this rather neglected speech of Lysias' included among documents expressing the viewpoint of those who shied from both extremes, oligarchic and democratic, but especially from the latter in the obscure period between the restoration of democ- racy and the outbreak of the Corinthian War. 1. OCCASION AND DATE The title of Or. 25, as preserved in the manuscripts, AHMOY KATAAYEEQE AIIOAOFIA, "Defense on a Charge of Subverting the Democracy," is legally incorrect. I hope to show that the misnomer derives from the legitimate insight of an ancient compiler into what the speech really says about Athenian democracy. It supposes for audi- ence, as the opening address to the jury indicates, an ordinary heliastic court of the restored democracy. Presumably (but not explicitly) the occasion for X is that of the preliminary scrutiny (dokimasia) required of all citizens entering public office (10, 23).8 No office is specified. The procedures for a scrutiny did not require candidates to offer proof of technical competence for office, but the examiners might find against anyone whose support for the laws and democratic constitution of Ath- ens they had reason to doubt.9 (Though the testimony of Aristotle and Plato suggests that City men might have confidence in the amnesty, several passages in the Orators confirm that such charges were often heard after 403.)10 The speech assumes that opponents have used the 8For the requirement see Arist. Ath. 55.2; Aeschin. 3.15; Lys. 15.2. For the occa- sion see Blass (note 2 above) 511; Jebb (note 2 above) 250-51; L. Gernet and M. Bizos, Lysias: Discours II (Paris 1955) 111;RE 5 (1905) 1270 s.v. dokimasia; Rauchenstein (note 2 above) 61-62. 9Arist. Ath. 55.3-4. Cf. the case of Theramenes (Lys. 13.10) and of Mantitheus (Lys. 16.3-8, 18), who claims to have provoked antipathy by wearing his hair in the aristocratic style. '?For the effectiveness of the amnesty see Arist. Ath. 40.2 and Plato Ep. 7.325b. But see also Lys. 26.9, 31.26. In Isoc. 18 an oligarch is defendant in a suit brought by a democrat at a time when the amnesty is of recent date (36).