Lysias

Lysias worked in Athens during the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC, a logographer who composed courtroom speeches for clients embroiled in public and private legal battles. Thirty-four of his speeches survive in the medieval corpus, with many more known by title or fragment. Ancient critics, particularly Dionysius of Halicarnassus, singled him out as the master of the plain style: idiomatic language, voices tailored to each speaker, narrative stripped to what mattered. Later scholars canonized him among the ten Attic orators. His speech Against Eratosthenes and the fragmentary Olympic Oration remain go-to sources for understanding postwar Athens and the political arguments that shaped Greek civic life.