oratory. It was natural to Antiphon to pay attention to details of style, and his style is of a rather archaic tone. Andocides, on the other hand, was not a trained orator, except in so far as every Athenian was trained in youth in the elements of speaking. He was not either a professional pleader or a frequent speaker in public—indeed, from the fact that he lived long in exile he cannot have had many opportunities of appearing either in the law-courts or the assembly. Possessing a convenient fluency of speech and a thorough command of the language of daily life, he finds in it a satisfactory means of expression. In most cases he seems to have by nature what Lysias obtained by art—a clear and direct way of expressing his thoughts, a simplicity of language in which nothing strained or unfamiliar strikes the ear. On the other hand, there are inconsistencies in his style; there are times when, apparently without premeditation, he does use words or phrases slightly foreign to the speech of common life. We have a feeling that this was done without affectation; that in the course of his fluent and rapid utterance he used just those words which naturally occurred to him as appropriate.[100] In this he differs from Lysias, who took the common speech and perfected it into a literary form, attaining by study a refined simplicity and purity which only careful practice could produce. On the whole, Andocides is most effective when he is most simple; when he uses common words and makes no attempt at the rhetorical artifices which do not come natural to him. The following narrative will emphasize my point: ‘When we had all been taken to prison, and it was night and the prison gates were shut, and one man’s mother had come, and another’s sister, and another’s wife and children, and sounds of lamentation were heard as they wept and bewailed our miserable state, Charmides spoke to me—he was a cousin of mine, of the same age as myself, and he had been brought up in our home from childhood. ‘“Andocides,” he said, “you see what serious trouble we are in; and though I did not want to say anything, or to annoy you at all before, I am now forced to do so on account of the misfortune we are come to. ‘“Your other friends and associates, apart from us who are your relations, have some of them already been executed for the charges on which we are being done to death, while others have admitted their guilt by fleeing from the country. ‘“If you have heard anything about this affair, tell the truth, and by doing so save both yourself, and your father, who must be very dear to you, and your brother-in-law, who is married to your only sister, and finally, all the rest of your family and friends, not to mention me—for in all my life I have never caused you annoyance, but am devoted to you and ready to do anything I can to help you.”’[101]