HYPERIDES (Ύττερα'δτ/ς), one of the ten Attic orators, was son of Glaucippus, of a noble family of the tribe Aegeis and the deme Collytus. He was probably younger than Lycurgus (born about 396 b.c.) and older than Demosthenes (born about 385 B.C.). Having studied under Isocrates, he began life as a writer of speeches for the courts, and in 360 b.c. he prosecuted Autocles, a general charged with treason in Thrace. From the end of the Sacred War, 346- 324 b.c., Hyperides supported Demosthenes in the struggle against Macedon; but in the affair of Harpalus he was one of the ten public prosecutors of Demosthenes, and on the exile of his former leader he became the head of the patriotic party (see Demosthenes). He was the chief promoter of the Lamian War against Antipater and Craterus. After the decisive defeat of Crannon, 322 b.c., Hyperides with the other orators demanded by Antipater was condemned to death by the subdued Athenians, but fled to Aegina and thence into sanctuary in the temple of Demeter at Hermione. Antipater’s emissaries dragged him forth to be put to death at Athens. Hyperides was an ardent pursuer of “the beautiful,” which in his time generally meant pleasure and luxury. His temper was easy-going and humorous; and hence, though in his development of the periodic sentence he followed Isocrates, the essential tendencies of his style are those of Lysias, whom he surpassed, however, in the richness of his vocabulary and in the variety of his powers. His diction was plain and forcible, though he occasionally indulged in long compound words probably borrowed from the Middle Comedy, with which, and with the everyday life of his time, he was in full sympathy. His composition was simple. He was specially distinguished’for subtlety of expression, ...grace, and wit, as well as for tact in approaching his case and handling his subject matter. Professor Jebb sums up the criticism of Longinus in the phrase—“Hyperides was the Sheridan of Athens.” Of his lost speeches we should perhaps regret most the Δτ/λιακός, on the presidency of the Delian temple claimed by Athens and Delos, which was adjudged by the Amphictyons to Athens.
The extant works of Hyperides are—1, Fragment of the àirohoyia υπtρ Λ,υκ<iφρovos, Bro Lycophrone, delivered before 349 B.C., incidentally interesting as throwing light on the order of marriage processions and other details of Athenian life, and on the Athenian government of Lemnos; 2, , Tπtp ’ Eυξ evlππoυ dσayye ∖ las άπολογία πρi>s ∏oλυeυκτov, Pro Euxenippo, about 330 B.c., nearly perfect (a locus classicus on ∈i<rα77eλiαι); 3, fragments of the Κατά ∆∙ημoσθivoυs, In Demosthenem, see above; 4, a considerable portion of the λJγos iτιτiφιos, Oratio Funebris, over Leosthenes and his comrades who fell in the Lamian war, 322 b.c., after Antiphilus’s victory over Leonnatus at Melitea. This is an elevated panegyric in the style of Isocrates, but in invention and sentiment the best specimen we have of epideictic oratory. Of the epilogue a portion is preserved by Stobaeus only. The MSS. are papyri—those of the first two speeches found by Joseph Arden, January 1847, that of the third speech by A. C. Harris, 1847, of the last by the Rev. H. Stobart, 1856, all at Thebes in Egypt. They are among the oldest extant MSS., dating within the limits 300 b.c. and 300 A. ι>.
Principal Editions.— AU the remains, F. Blass, Leipsic, 1869: Λov. en∙ιτα≠. and vιr'ep 'Eυξey., J. C. Cobet, Leyden, 1877; Κατά ∆ημ. (with facsimile of MS.), A C. Harris, London, 1877; Κατά ∆ημ., Professor Churchill Babington, London, 1850; orations for Lyc. and for Euren. (with facsimile of MS.), Id., Cambridge, 1853; The Funeral oration, Id., ib., 1859. See also ora tores Attici, J. G. Baiter and H. Sauppe, 1850. Translations.— German, W. S. Teuffel, Stuttgart, 1865-69; French, Euren., 1860, or. Fun., 1858, H. Caffiaux, Valenciennes.
See Egger in Mém. de ΓAcad. des Inscript, et Belles Lettres, 1870; W. Ti öbst in Neue Jahrb. f. class. Philol., 1876; Herrn. Hager in Curtius's Gram. Stud., 1870; Journ. of Philology, Cambridge, 1872-73; Mähly in Neue Jahrb. f. class. Philol. u. Pädagog., 1872; Professor R. C. Jebb, The Attic orators (vol. ii., ch. xxii., pp. 381-92), London, 1876; G. Boehnecke, Demosthenes, Lykurgos, Hyperides, und ihr Zeitalter, Berlin, 1874. There is a Russian study by A. N. Schwarz, on the speech for Euxenippus, published at Moscow, 1875.
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