omedies, of which only fragments remain; and the
unanimous praise of posterity awakens our regret for the loss of one of
the most elegant writers of antiquity. The comedies, indeed, of
Plautus and Terence may give us a general notion of the New Comedy of
the Greeks, from which they were confessedly drawn; but there is good
reason to suppose that the works even of the latter Roman writer fell
far short of the wit and elegance of Menander.

The latter days of literary Athens were chiefly distinguished by the
genius of her ORATORS and PHILOSOPHERS. There were ten Attic orators,
whose works were collected by the Greek grammarians, and many of whose
orations have come down to us. Their names are Antiphon, Andocides,
Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, AEschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides
and Dinarchus. ANTIPHON, the earliest of the ten was born B.C. 480.
He opened a school of rhetoric, and numbered among his pupils the
historian Thucydides. Antiphon was put to death in 411 B.C. for the
part which he took in establishing the oligarchy of the Four Hundred.

ANDOCIDES, who was concerned with Alcibiades in the affair of the
Hermae, was born at Athens in B.C. 467, tend died probably about 391.

LYSIAS, also born at Athens in 458, was much superior to Andocides as
an orator, but being a METIC or resident alien, he was not allowed to
speak in the assemblies or courts of justice, and therefore wrote
orations for others to deliver.

ISOCRATES was born in 436. After receiving the instructions of some of
the most celebrated sophists of the day, he became himself a
speech-writer and professor of rhetoric; his weakly constitution and
natural timidity preventing him from taking a part in public life. He
made away with himself in 338, after the fatal battle of Chaeronea, in
despair, it is said, of his country's fate. He took great pains with
his compositions, and is reported to have spent ten, or, according to
others, fifteen years over his Panegyric oration.

ISAEUS flourished between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the
accession of Philip of Macedon. He opened a school of rhetoric at
Athens, and is said to have numbered Demosthenes among his pupils. The
orations of Isaeus were exclusively judicial, and the whole of the
eleven which have come down to us turn on the subject of inheritances.

AESCHINES was born in the year 389, and he was at first a violent
anti-Macedonian; but after his embassy along with Demosthenes and