‘I asked Piso whether he would save my life for money; he said he would, if it was a large sum. So I said I was ready to pay a talent, and he agreed to the terms. I knew well enough that he regarded neither god nor man, but I thought my only chance lay in trusting him. So when he had sworn by his own and his children’s hope of salvation that he would save me if he got a talent for it, I went into my strong-room and opened the chest.’ The sight of its contents, amounting to about six talents’ worth of gold and silver as well as a quantity of plate, was too much for Piso’s honesty. ‘I begged him to allow me enough for my journey, but he said I ought to be well satisfied if I saved my skin.’ The prisoner was handed over by Piso to the keeping of Damnippus and Theognis in the former’s house, and Damnippus, who seems to have been softer-hearted than the rest, agreed to speak with Theognis on Lysias’ behalf. He knew his man, and ‘thought he would do anything for money.’ While they were bargaining, Lysias managed to slip away unnoticed through the back-door, and on the following day escaped on ship-board to Megara; his brother Polemarchus was arrested by Eratosthenes and put to death.[118] During his exile, which lasted something less than a year, Lysias showed himself a true friend of the democracy. He gave two hundred shields to the army and obtained recruits and gifts of money. When the oligarchy fell in 403 B.C. the ecclesia, on the motion of Thrasybulus, passed a vote conferring the citizenship on Lysias; but owing to some informality the decree was declared illegal, and he lost his privilege immediately. From this time till about 380 B.C. he was actively employed in writing speeches, very few of which he delivered himself. His industry must have been considerable, since Dionysius attributed to him not less than two hundred forensic speeches. The prosecution of Eratosthenes in 403 B.C. marks, so far as we know, his only personal contact with Athenian politics. The occasion of the _Olympiacus_ shows us Lysias appealing to a far wider audience at the Olympic festival of 388 B.C. He died, according to the computation of the ancients, soon after 380 B.C., at the age of about eighty years. § 2 In literature as in politics we grow tired of hearing Aristides called the Just, and so perfect writers are less admired than they should be. In Latin Terence, praised by all for the purity of his style, is less read than the ruder Plautus, and in Greek Lysias, accounted by ancient critics the standard writer of Attic prose,[119] is less appreciated than Demosthenes. Using the everyday language as a literary medium, Lysias, by his exceptional skill and mastery over its idiom, exalted it to a simplicity and accuracy of expression never surpassed by other writers. This simplicity is deceptive: ‘ut sibi quivis Speret idem, sudet multum frustraque laboret Ausus idem.’