excluded from the stage, and the materials of the dramatic poet were derived entirely from the fictitious adventures of persons in private life. The two most distinguished writers of this school were PHILEMON and MENANDER. Philemon was probably born about the year 360 B.C., and was either a Cilician or Syracusan, but came at an early age to Athens. He is considered as the founder of the New Comedy, which was soon afterwards brought to perfection by his younger contemporary Menander. The latter was an Athenian, and was born in B.C. 312. He was drowned at the age of 52, whilst swimming in the harbour of Piraeus. He wrote upwards of 100 comedies, 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.