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Lysias

Lysias

445 BCE–380 BCE · Athens

Lysias (c. 445 - c. 380 BCE) was an Athenian speechwriter and one of the canonical "Ten Attic Orators." As a resident foreigner (metic) he could not normally speak in court himself, but he made his name composing speeches for others to deliver in lawsuits. Admired in antiquity for his clear, simple, and natural style, his surviving speeches vividly illuminate everyday life, law, and politics in Athens around the end of the Peloponnesian War.

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Stop 1 of 1445 BCE–380 BCELived

AthensAttica (Greece)

What they did here

Attic orator and speechwriter in Athens.

About Athens

The intellectual capital of the Greek world, where Socrates questioned in the agora and four great schools—Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa, and Epicurus' Garden—took root within a single square mile.

In Athens at the same time

Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Herodotus, Gorgias of Leontini, Euripides

See other sages who lived in Athens→

Works(34)