A Commentary on Lysias, Speeches 1-11

Book excerpt: Lysias was the leading Athenian speech-writer of the generation (403-380 BC) following the Peloponnesian War, and his speeches form a leading source for all aspects of the history of Athenian society during this period. The speeches are widely read today, not least because of their simplicity of linguistic style. This simplicity is often deceptive, however, and one of the aims of this commentary is to help the reader assess the rhetorical strategies of each of the speeches and the often highly tendentious manipulation of argument. This volume includes the text itself (reproduced from Carey's OCT and apparatus criticus), with a facing translation. Each speech receives an extensive introduction, covering general questions of interpretation. In the lemmatic section of the commentary, individual phrases are examined in detail, providing a close reading of the Greek text. To maximize accessibility, the Greek lemmata are accompanied by translation, and individual Greek terms are mostly transliterated. This is the first part of a projected multi-volume commentary on the speeches and fragments, which will be the first full commentary on Lysias in modern times.