ABSTRACT
The so-called ‘Canon of the Ten Attic Orators’, which was established at some date between the third century BC and the second century AD, has had a dominating effect on the survival of the orators whose works we have today.1 The canon as we have it names ten orators: Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides, Lycurgus, and Dinarchus. As is immediately evident, the list is in neither alphabetical nor chronological order (for Lysias was born before Andocides, and Aeschines, Hyperides and Lycurgus were born before Demosthenes). Moreover, while Antiphon is said by Quintilian to have been the first to write speeches (3.1.11), Dinarchus is not the last orator to have lived and worked, but was followed by others-Demetrius of Phalerum to name but one. We do have some speeches by other orators; about half a dozen by Apollodorus, for example, which have survived in the orations of Demosthenes;2 or there is the speech On The Twelve Years (which today exists only in fragments), attributed to Demades, but this is a later composition which could even be the product of imperial times.3 Thus most of what is extant comes from the orators of the canon.
