Lysias

Lysias,
Attic orator. The ancient biographical tradition, that he was born in 459/8 and died c.380 BC ([Plutarch] Vit. Lys 835c, 836a; Dionysius Halicarnassius De Lysia 1, 12), is clear but problematic. The latter date is plausible; the former less so, and many scholars suggest that a man some fifteen years younger would have been more likely to engage in his range of activities after 403 (the speeches, and cf. also [Demosthenes] 59. 21–2). He appears as a character in Plato's Phaedrus; in the Republic, his father Cephalus is an elderly Syracusan, resident as a metic in Athens, and friend of assorted Athenian aristocrats: the search for dramatic dates, however, is probably vain.

Lysias and his brother Polemarchus left Athens after Cephalus' death to join the Panhellenic colony of Thurii in southern Italy, where he is said to have studied [The entire page is 836 words long]

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