[70]
Indeed, those critics are no fools who think
the speeches attributed to Charisius1 were in reality
written by Menander. But I consider that he shows
his power as an orator far more clearly in his
comedies; since assuredly we can find no more
perfect models of every oratorical quality than the
judicial pleadings of his Epitrepontes,2 Epicleros
and Locri, or the declamatory speeches in the Psophodes, Nomothetes. and Hypobolimaeus.
1 A contemporary of Demosthenos; his speeches have not survived, but were considered to resemble those of Lysias.
2 The greater portion of the Epitrepontes has been recovered from a papyrus. The other plays are lost. The names may be translated: “The Arbitrators,” “The Heiress,” “The Locri,” “The Timid Man,” “The Lawgiver,” “The Changeling.”
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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