HYPERIDES

Form: Gr. Hypereides.

One of the Ten Attic Orators, born about B.C. 390, son of the Athenian Glancippas. He was a pupil of Plato and Isocr&t&, and won for himself an important position as a forensic and political orator, although his private life was not unblemished. As a statesman, he decidedly shared the views of Demosthenes, and was his steadfast ally in the struggle against the Macedonian party. It is true that he afterwards [B.C. 324] took part in the prosecution of Demosthenes, when accused of having taken bribes from Alexander's treasurer, Harpalus, and that he contributed to his condemnation on that charge. After the destruction of Thebes by Alexander [335] it was only with difficulty that he and Demosthenes escaped being given up to the Macedonians. After the death of Alexander [323] he was the chief instigator of the Lamian War, at the unfortunate conclusion of which he and Demosthenes (who had been reconciled to one another in the meantime) and other patriots were condemned to death by the Macedonian party. He fled for sanctuary to a temple in Aegina, but was dragged away from it by force, and by order of Antipater put to death at Corinth in 322. Of the seventy-seven speeches which were known to antiquity as the work of Hyperides, only a few fragments were known until recent times; but in 1847, in a tomb at Thebes, in Egypt, extensive fragments were found of his speech Against Demosthenes, together with a speech For Lycophron and the whole of his speech Against Euxenippus. In 1856 there was a further discovery in Egypt of an important part of the Funeral Oration delivered in 322 over those who had fallen in the siege of Lamia. [The conclusion of the speech Against Philippides and the whole of that Against Athenogenes were first published in 1891]. Though the speeches of Hyperides never attain to the force and depth of those of Demosthenes, nevertheless they were valued highly on account of the skill of their construction and the grace and charm of their expression.