Dinarchus, the last of the truly Attic orators, is of very little importance in himself, but must find a place in any history of this kind as representing the beginning of the decline of oratory. ‘He flourished most of all,’ says Dionysius, ‘after the death of Alexander, when Demosthenes and the other orators had been condemned to perpetual banishment or put to death, and there was nobody left who was worth mentioning after them.’ This contains a fairly just estimate of the merits of the man, who, according to the same critic, ‘neither invented a style of his own, like Lysias and Isocrates and Isaeus, nor perfected the inventions of others, as, in our judgment, Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Hyperides did.’[476] His merits and defects are very obvious. He knows all the technique of prose composition; he can avoid hiatus cleverly, and writes a style which is easily intelligible, even when his sentences are inordinately long. He has some skill in the use of new words and metaphors—μετοιωνίσασθαι τὴν τύχην, ‘auspicate your fortunes anew’—ἐκκαθάρατε, ‘purge him away from the State’—δευσοποιὸς πονηρία, ‘ingrained wickedness.’ He has some vigour and liveliness: abrupt statements like the following are terse and graphic enough—‘You chose prosecutors in due course; he came before the court; you acquitted him’;[477] he makes good use of rhetorical questions addressed to the defendant:—‘Did you propose any motion about it? Did you give any counsel? Did you contribute any money? Did you ever in any small matter prove serviceable to those who were working for the common safety? Not in the slightest degree’ ... etc.[478] His sarcasm, which is rare, because he is generally too directly violent to be sarcastic, is at times pointed:—‘Read again the decree which Demosthenes proposed against Demosthenes.’[479] He knows the oratorical tricks: he can flatter the jury by references to their intelligence, by praise of the Areopagus, by encomia on the virtues of their ancestors. He can appeal to ancient and modern precedent for the impartiality of judges and their severity against evil-doers. He is at his best in the long refutation of the defence which he anticipates from Demosthenes[480]—this is, on the whole, orderly and effective—and in short passages like the following from the speech _Against Philocles_: ‘Reflecting on these facts, Athenians, and remembering the present crisis, which calls for honour, not corruption, it is your duty to hate evil-doers, to exterminate from your city such beasts, and show the world that the nation has not shared in the degradation of certain of its politicians and generals, and is not a slave to conventional opinion; knowing that, by God’s favour, with the help of justice and concord, we shall easily defend ourselves, if any enemies wrongfully attack us, but that in union with corruption and treachery and other such vices which infect mankind, no city can ever be saved.’[481]