Hyperides possessed an active wit which enabled him on many occasions to evade an argument by making his opponent appear ridiculous. Euthias, in prosecuting Phryne for impiety, made his audience shudder by describing the torments of the wicked in Hades. ‘How is Phryne to blame,’ asked Hyperides, ‘for the fact that a stone hangs over the head of Tantalus?’[451] In the _Euxenippus_, he complains that the process of impeachment before the assembly has been applied to the present case: ‘Impeachment has hitherto been employed against people like Timomachus, Leosthenes, Callistratus, Philon, and Theotimus who lost Sestos—some of them for betraying ships which they commanded, some for betraying cities, and one for giving, as an orator, bad advice to the people.... The present state of affairs is ridiculous—Diognides and Antidorus are impeached for hiring flute-players at a higher price than the law allows; Agasicles of Piraeus is impeached for being registered as of Halimus; and Euxenippus is impeached on account of the dream which he says he dreamed.’[452] His sarcasm is playful at times, even in serious passages; for instance the following: ‘These Euboeans Demosthenes enrolled as Athenian citizens, and he treats them as his intimate friends; this need not surprise you; naturally enough, since his policy is always ebbing and flowing, he has secured as his friends people from Euripus.’[453] Another good example of his sarcastic humour appears in the defence of Euxenippus against the charge of Macedonian sympathy: ‘If your assertion (the prosecutor’s) were true, you would not be the only person to know it. In the case of all others who in word or deed favour Philip, their secret is not their own; it is shared by the whole city. The very children in the schools know the names of the orators who are in his pay, of the private persons who entertain and welcome his emissaries, and go out into the streets to meet them on their arrival.’[454] This same sarcasm is in many places a powerful weapon of offence, as in the next extract from the indictment of Demosthenes: ‘You, by whose decree he was put in custody, who when the watch was relaxed did nothing to assure it, and when it was abandoned altogether did not bring the guilty to trial—no doubt it was for nothing that you turned the opportunity to such advantage. Are we to believe that Harpalus gradually paid out his money to the minor politicians, who could only make a noise and raise an uproar, and overlooked you, who were master of the whole situation?’[455] The following fragment contains the most striking example of irony to be found anywhere in his works; the situation explains itself: