‘You were a general, Lysicles; a thousand of your fellow-citizens met their death, two thousand were made prisoners, and our enemies have set up a trophy of victory over Athens, and all Greece is enslaved; all this happened under your leadership and generalship; and yet do you dare to live and face the sun’s light, and invade the market-place—you, who have become a memorial of disgrace and reproach to your country?’[433] HYPERIDES Hyperides, a member of a middle-class family, was born in 389 B.C., and so was almost exactly contemporary with Lycurgus, whose political views he shared. He too, according to his biographer, was a pupil of Isocrates and of Plato, but the influence of the latter can nowhere be traced in his work. A man of easy morals and self-indulgent habits, he presents a striking contrast to the austerity of Lycurgus. The comic poets satirized his gluttony and his partiality for fish, and the Pseudo-Plutarch records that he took a walk through the fish-market every day of his life; but the pursuit of pleasure did not impair his activity. He was at first a writer of speeches for others, as Demosthenes was at the beginning of his career;[434] but before he reached the age of thirty he began to be concerned personally in trials of political import. He prosecuted the general Autocles on a charge of treachery, in 360 B.C.; he appeared against the orator Aristophon of Azenia, and Diopeithes. He impeached in 343 B.C., Philocrates, who had brought about the peace with Philip.[435] He was sent as a delegate to the Amphictyonic Council,[436] and showed himself a vigorous supporter of the policy of Demosthenes; in 340 B.C., when an attack on Euboea by Philip was anticipated, he collected a fleet of forty triremes, two of which he provided at his own cost. Shortly before Chaeronea he proposed a decree to honour Demosthenes; after the battle he took extreme measures for the public safety, including the enfranchisement of _metoeci_ and the manumission of slaves. He was prosecuted by Demades for moving an illegal decree, and retorted, ‘The arms of Macedon made it too dark to see the laws; it was not I who proposed the decree—but the battle of Chaeronea.’[437] He was able to retaliate soon afterwards by prosecuting Demades for the same offence of illegality. Demades had proposed to confer the title of _proxenos_ on Euthycrates, who had betrayed Olynthus to Philip. A fragment which remains of Hyperides’ speech on this subject shows him to be a master of sarcasm.[438]