‘As the sun traverses the whole world, marking out the seasons, and ordering everything in due proportion, and for the prudent and temperate of mankind takes charge of the growth of their food, the fruits of the earth and all else that is beneficial for life; so our city ever continues to punish the wicked and help the righteous, preserving equal opportunities for all, and restraining covetousness, and by her own risk and loss providing common security for all Greece.’[445] The _Epitaphios_ from which the last quotation is taken is a speech of a formal kind composed in the _epideictic_ style, and naturally recalls similar speeches of Isocrates and others. Its composition shows much greater care than was taken with the other speeches; thus there are few examples of harsh hiatus, a matter to which the author as a rule paid no attention. All the other extant speeches have far more instances of clashing vowels.[446] The antithetical sentences are appropriate to the style, and the periodic structure is like that of Isocrates, except that the sentences are, on the whole, shorter and simpler. In other speeches he mingles the periodic and the free styles with discretion. The objection to a long period is that it takes time to understand it; we cannot fully appreciate the importance of any one part until we have reached the end and are in a position to look back at the whole. For practical oratory it is far better to make a short statement which may be in periodic form, and amplify it by subsequent additions loosely connected by καί, δέ, γάρ, and such particles. This is what Hyperides does with success, for instance in the opening of the _Euxenippus_, an argumentative passage.[447] In narrative passages a free style is expected.[448] In contrast to this flowing style we must notice the quick abrupt succession of short sentences which he sometimes affects, either in the form of question and answer, as in the following fragment, or otherwise: ‘“Did you propose that the slaves should be made free?” “I did, to save the free men from becoming slaves.” “Did you move that the disfranchised citizens should be enfranchised?”—“I did, in order that all in harmony might fight side by side for their country.”’[449] Still more effective is the following: ‘It is on this account that you have enacted laws to deal separately with every possible offence that a citizen may commit. A man commits sacrilege—prosecution for sacrilege before the king-archon. He neglects his parents—the archon sits on his case. A man proposes an illegal measure—there is the council of the Thesmothetae. He makes himself liable to arrest—the “eleven” are permanent officials.’[450]