EXTANT SPEECHES The pseudo-Plutarch, in his life of Isaeus, mentions an Art of Rhetoric and 64 speeches, of which so were accounted genuine. From a passage of Photius it appears that at least' the 5o speeches of recognized authenticity were extant as late as A.D. 85o. Only eleven, with a large part of a twelfth, have come down to us ; but the titles of forty-two' others are The titles of the lost speeches confirm the statement of Dio 'For the words of Photius (cod. 263), Tobrow SE OG Td -yviatov µaprv pne4vres KaTaXEL7rOVTaL ,UOVOP, might be so rendered as to imply that, besides these 5o, others also were extant. See Att. Orat. ii. 311, note 2.
'Forty-four are given in Thalheim's ed.
'The second of our speeches (the Meneclean) was discovered in the Laurentian Library in 1785, and was edited in that year by Tyrwhitt. In editions previous to that date, Oration i. is made to conclude with a few lines which really belong to the end of Orat. ii. (s. 47, &XX' kretoi 7-6 rpa'yµa • • • O4icrao-0€), and this arrange ment is followed in the translation of Isaeus by Sir William Jones, to whom our second oration was, of course, then (1779) unknown. In Oration i. all that follows the words ,u7) rodyravrEc in s. 22 was first published in 1815 by Mai, from a ms. in the Ambrosian Library at Milan.
nysius that the speeches of Isaeus were exclusively forensic; and only three titles indicate speeches made in public causes. The remainder, concerned with private causes, may be classed under six heads: (I) anpucot—cases of claim to an inheritance; (2) frtanpucoi. —cases of claim to the hand of an heiress; (3) ocaoucaciat—cases of claim of property; (4) Itrouracdov—cases of claim to the ownership of a slave; (5) Eyyuns—action brought against a surety whose principal had made default ; (6) (as=-7rapaypacki7)—a special plea ; (7) gckEo-cs—appeal from one jurisdiction to another.
Eleven of the 12 extant speeches belong to class (I), the anpticol, or claims to an inheritance. This was probably the branch of practice in which Isaeus had done his most important and most characteristic work. And, according to the ancient custom, this class of speeches would therefore stand first in the manuscript collections of his writings. The case of Antiphon is parallel: his speeches in cases of homicide (chovtKot) were those on which his reputation mainly depended, and stood first in the manuscripts. Their exclusive preservation, like that of the speeches made by Isaeus in will-cases, is thus primarily an acci dent of manuscript tradition, but partly also the result of the writer's special prestige.
Six of the 12 extant speeches are directly concerned with claims to an estate ; five others are connected with legal proceed ings arising out of such a claim.
The speeches of Isaeus supply valuable illustrations to the early history of testamentary law. They show us the faculty of adoption, still, indeed, associated with the religious motive in which it originated, as a mode of securing that the sacred rites of the family shall continue to be discharged by one who can call himself the son of the deceased. But practically the civil aspect of adoption is, for the Athenian citizen, predominant over the religious ; he adopts a son in order to bestow property on a person to whom he wishes to bequeath it. The Athenian system, as interpreted by Isaeus, is thus intermediate, at least in spirit, between the purely religious standpoint of the Hindu and the maturer form which Roman testamentary law had reached before the time of Cicero.' As to the form of the speeches, it is remark
able for its variety. There are three which, taken together, may be considered as best representing the diversity and range of their author's power. The fifth, with its simple but lively diction, its graceful and persuasive narrative, recalls the qualities of Lysias. The 1 i th, with its sustained and impetuous power, has no slight resemblance to the manner of Demosthenes. The eighth is, of all, the most characteristic, alike in narrative and in argument. Isaeus is here seen at his best. No reader who is interested in the social life of ancient Greece need find Isaeus dull. If the glimpses of Greek society which he gives us are seldom so gay and picturesque as those which enliven the pages of Lysias, they are certainly not less suggestive. Here, where the innermost relations and central interests of the family are in question, we touch the springs of social life; we are not merely presented with scenic details of dress and furniture, but are enabled in no small degree to conceive the feelings of the actors.
The best manuscript of Isaeus is in the British Museum Crippsianus A (=-Burneianus 95, 13th century), which contains also Antiphon, Andocides, Lycurgus and Deinarchus. The next best is Bekker's Laurentianus B (Florence), of the 15th century. Besides these, he used Marcianus L (Venice), saec. 14, Vratis laviensis Z saec. 14' and two very inferior mss., Ambrosianus A. 99 P (which he dismissed after Or. i.), and Ambrosianus D. 42, Q (which contains only Or. ii.). Schumann, in his edition of 1831, generally followed Bekker's text ; he had no fresh apparatus beyond a collation of a Paris ms. R in part of Or. i. ; but he had sifted the Aldine more carefully. Baiterus and Sauppe (185o) had a new collation of A, and also used a collation of Burneianus 96, M, given by Dobson in vol. iv. of his edition (1828). C.
'Cf. Sir H. J. F. Maine's Ancient Law (1906) ; ch. vi., and the Tagore Law Lectures (187o) by Herbert Cowell, lect. ix., "On the Rite of Adoption," pp. 208 f.
'The date of L and Z is given as the end of the 15th century in the introduction to Wyse's edition.
Scheibe (Teubner, 186o) made it his especial aim to complete the work of his predecessors by restoring the correct Attic forms of words; thus (e.g.) he gives iiryba for iveyba, Sioci.lev for bebialiev, and the like,—following the consent of the mss., how ever, in such forms as the accusative of proper names in nv rather than 77, or (e.g.) the future cf•avncroktaL rather than ckavoi.wat., etc., and on such doubtful points as ckparepes instead of ckpitropes, or 'EA??evicts instead of Eaftevlas.