Dionysius finds that the expressions here used, προπέτεια, ἀδικία, πρὸς τὰ Εὐμαθοῦς πράγματα προσῆλθον, sound to him artificial rather than spontaneous. In this he may be right; but we feel him to be hypercritical when he blames the next sentence for lack of simplicity, and tries, by a few verbal alterations, to show how it might have been improved. He would re-write the sentence thus:—‘When I was trierarch, and it was reported at home that I had been killed, Eumathes, having some money of mine on deposit,’ etc. Here he has certainly succeeded in omitting once the name Eumathes, which occurs twice in Isaeus; but the other changes consist purely in the substitution of two temporal clauses introduced by ὅτε (when) for two participial clauses in the genitive absolute—a construction which is, surely, common enough in all Greek writers to escape the censure of being ‘rhetorical.’ § 3. _Structure of Speeches_ The exceptional power of Isaeus does not, then, depend upon any charm of language or any oratorical gift; it lies in his exhaustive legal knowledge and his remarkable skill in argument. He has an almost unique gift for circumstantial statement and proof of the facts bearing on his case. This is the cleverness (δεινότης) to which Dionysius so often refers with grudging admiration. His speeches are not arranged according to a single plan, but, on the contrary, exhibit great variety of structure. Lysias keeps practically to one form—exordium, narrative, proof, epilogue. Isaeus, when the narrative is too long or complicated to be grasped all at once, does not set it out as a whole, but breaks it up into sections, each of which is accompanied by its evidence and argument.[174] ‘The orator is afraid.’ thinks Dionysius, ‘that the argument may be hard to follow, on account of the number of its sections, and that the proofs of the various points, if all collected together, being so numerous as they must be, dealing with matters so numerous, may be detrimental to clearness.’ The critic is referring particularly to the speech _For Euphiletus_ (Or. xii.), a large fragment of which his quotations have preserved for us; but an analysis of any of the extant speeches will show that they are constructed skilfully on varying plans, unhampered by technical rule, with an art that adapts its material according to the requirements of the case. This skill, which aims at success rather than literary finish, shows that Isaeus was above all a competent tactician—such a master of argument that, ‘whereas we should be ready to believe Lysias even when he tells a lie, we can hardly regard Isaeus without suspicion even when he tells the truth.’[175] Dionysius is no doubt led rather far away by his desire for a contrast; he has given Isaeus a bad name and is seeking means to justify his condemnation of the man who ‘takes a mean advantage of his adversary and outmanœuvres the judges.’[176]