The Orations of Hyperides Against Athenogenes and Philippides. Edited, with
a Translation, by F. G. Kenyon. (Bell and Sons.)— The MSS. of these two orations were discovered some six years ago. ThatagainstAthenogenes is of a very early date, probably the end of the second century B.C. Seventeen columns out of a probable twenty have been preserved, some of them considerably mutilated, but without such lacuna as to hinder a fair comprehension of the subject. An unknown plaintiff, in whose name the orator speaks, brought an action against Athenogenes for what was practically obtaining money under false pretences. He had wished to buy the freedom of a. certain slave-boy. The owner induced him to buy, not the freedom, but the boy himself, his father, and his brother. The plaintiff consented ; but he found that, in buying the father, he had bought the debts of the perfumer's shop which the man kept, and was liable for five talents. The purchase- money was to have been forty minas. The difference is that between £900 and £140. The plaintiff had signed a contract by which he had made himself liable for the man's debt ; but the plaintiff's counsel relied on an appeal to the court's feeling of equity, and, to the odium that he could raise against the defendant as a bad patriot, as having, for instance, left Athens just before the battle of Chaeronea. The other oration is of a more public character, and is, in effect, an attack on the pro- Macedonian party in Athens. The circumstances were not wholly unlike those which gave occasion to the speeches Ile Corona. Mr. Kenyon has printed the text with various corrections, and furnished a convenient translation.
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