Hyperides

Hyperides (born 389 bc—died 322) was an Athenian politician who opposed the Macedonian hegemony over Greece and was ranked as one of the greatest of the “canonical” 10 Attic orators.

A member of a wealthy family, Hyperides is said to have studied with both Plato and Isocrates. He began his career in the usual way, by ghostwriting speeches for others to use in the Athenian law courts. Much of Athenian politics involved bringing charges against political opponents. His first prosecution, against the prominent politician Aristophon in 363, was unsuccessful. In 343 he succeeded in driving into exile an important pro-Macedonian politician, Philocrates. After the Macedonian defeat of Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea (338), Hyperides became one of the leaders of the anti-Macedonian movement when he opposed Alexander the Great’s demand that Athens hand over Demosthenes, the major opponent of Macedon in Athens, and other anti-Macedonians. He prosecuted those who favoured cooperation with Macedon, such as Demades. In 324 or 323 Harpalus, Alexander’s treasurer, arrived in Athens with a fortune he had appropriated, which the Athenians seized. Harpalus was imprisoned but escaped, and the escape was attributed to bribery. Hyperides successfully prosecuted both Demades and Demosthenes for bribery. In 323, when Alexander died, Hyperides supported the Athenian decision to revolt against Macedon in the Lamian War and delivered the funeral oration over the Athenian dead. After the war ended with the Macedonian victory at the Battle of Crannon, Hyperides fled Athens, but he was captured and executed by Antipater, who had been appointed by Alexander as commander in Macedonia and Greece.

Ancient critics consistently ranked Hyperides among the best of the Attic orators. In the ancient world 77 speeches were passed down under his name, but only 50 were thought to be genuine. Except for some quotations of varying length, they were all lost in late antiquity. From 1847 to 1892 substantial fragments of six speeches were discovered on ancient papyri. The most important are fragments of his prosecution of Demosthenes (324) and his funeral oration for the dead in the Lamian War (323). In 2006 advanced imaging techniques revealed two more speeches, on 10 pages, that had been scraped from papyrus that was reused in a medieval manuscript.

The ancient critic Longinus, in On the Sublime, finds Hyperides strong in all the most important traits of an orator, but best in none, and thus compares him to an athlete in the pentathlon. Hyperides’ style is witty and tasteful. He used humour against his opponents, rather than the violent abuse so common among his contemporaries. A reconstruction of the fragmentary papyri texts with translation is published in J.O. Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, vol. 2 (1954).