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But if the orators give us an impression of cunning subtlety which far transcends the bounds that we even now allow to lawyers, their clients are in no better case. By the middle of the fourth century Athens was in full decadence. Her men had lost all the vigour and courage that brought their country safe through the dangers of the Persian Wars: her women, perhaps, were even worse than the men---corruptio optimi pessima---and had sunk into a state of utter degradation.

Impotent old men and designing young women are the chief figures in most of Isus' speeches; and,[190] as his editor says, to have any confidence in the veracity or virtue of his clients argues a truly Arcadian simplicity. There is the case of Euctemon, for example---the old man who divorces his wife and leaves his children, to live with his slave-woman, Alce. This unfortunate, whose youth has been degraded for her master's profit, has her revenge when the old man grows senile. She induces him to remove her from the den of infamy which has been one of the sources of his wealth, to live with her in the drinking-shop over which she is put in charge, and finally to recognise one of her bastards as his own son. The family, threatened by a second marriage, reluctantly consent to help in an adoption which ran counter to the first principles of Attic law; and it is not until the old man's death, when his property falls into dispute, that his 'misfortunes' with the woman (so the advocate euphemistically describes them) come to light. The facts of the case are utterly sordid; but every detail is enveloped by Isus in a cloud of sophistical arguments which show both a complete absence of moral sense in the advocate and so great a faculty of deception that modern writers have inferred---it need not be said with how little reason---that polygamy was not illegal at Athens, that concubinage was recognised by law, and that bastards had the rights of legitimate children. All three statements are untrue; but[191] they may fairly be deduced from the ever-shifting arguments that the lawyer uses. In another of his cases it is an old man at death's door who marries a young girl, and the usual imputations upon the bride's motives form one of his strongest arguments. In a third, the estate of Pyrrhus, a woman of notoriously bad life is foisted by her brother upon one of her old lovers, and the claim is then made that she is his legal wife.

But to go through the details of Isus' cases would be merely tedious. In all of them we see that moral degradation and absence of social rectitude which was the natural result of the inferiority of women in the eyes of the Attic law. Women, like children, cannot legally enter into a contract, even if it is only to purchase a bushel of corn; the son of a brother has a stronger claim to an intestate property than the son of a daughter, for the law says, 'males must prevail'; a daughter cannot inherit in her own person; she is only an intermediary by whom the estate is transmitted through marriage to a male of the same blood as her father. A woman's disabilities are painfully plain in Isus: as for her legal rights, it is hard to discover from his speeches how far they have any actual existence. The orator, at least, when his male clients seem to have the law against them, does not hesitate to appeal to the natural sympathies of[192] the male jurymen; and in the tenth oration we see how shamefully an heiress, in spite of the law's formal protection, could be despoiled by her guardian and her brother.

It is generally assumed that this male superiority before the law had a religious sanction, the necessity of keeping up the family worship, which could only be done by a man. If we were speaking of a primitive society the argument would have some force, but the Athenians of the fourth century were at the end rather than the beginning of their national life: religion was dead, and the foundations of morality undermined; only the law remained unaltered, that women were the inferior sex. How far women contributed themselves to their degradation may be studied in all the orators' speeches, but two cases are especially significant: Antiphon's murder speech 'Against the stepmother,' and Lysias' 'Defence for the murder of Eratosthenes.'

The first is grimly horrible in its sordid realism; as Antiphon says, it is the story of Clytemnestra repeated, but divested now of all its tragic romance. Two women are the chief characters: one a free-born Athenian, the wife of the murdered man; the other a slave, the mistress of the man's friend, one Philoneos. The facts are these: Philoneos gets tired of his mistress' devotion, and determines to rid himself of her by the simple process of selling her into a[193] life of utter degradation. He reveals his intention to his friend, and the two men decide to have one last carouse, the girl waiting upon them, before she goes to her ruin. But the man's wife, who has found her husband as false to her as Philoneos is to his lover, intervenes. She makes the acquaintance of the slave-girl, who is still passionately devoted to her worthless master, and persuades her to regain his affection by a love-potion which she will provide. The girl agrees, and when the two men meet at dinner she pours the potion (which, unknown to her, is a deadly poison) into their cups, giving the larger share to her own false lord. Philoneos falls dead immediately; the other man collapses, and dies some days afterwards. The slave-girl is taken and broken on the wheel; the wife is in this speech accused by her stepson of her share in the crime.

Antiphon's pleadings throw a lurid light on the relations between men and women in a slave State; the speech of Lysias in defence of Eratosthenes' murder is an even more invaluable document. The orator's client is accused of murder, and relies for his defence on the plea that his victim was taken in adultery, and therefore lawfully put to death. The law, at Athens a written, not an unwritten code, is definitely on the accused man's side; but it is curious that this is the only surviving speech in which it is pleaded as an excuse. It seems, indeed, that even[194] the Athenians hesitated to use the ferocious power that the law gave them; and we may imagine, if we will, that this was a test case, brought, perhaps, by one of the Socratic circle, to try the validity of the law in the face of the new feminist doctrines. In any event, the Ionian Lysias, whose honeyed pen was at the service of the highest bidder, was a person thoroughly distasteful to Plato and his friends, and it is probable that in this speech he had the satisfaction both of defending the established order of social morality, and also of striking a shrewd blow at his personal enemies. The speech, which is a model of art, begins with some compliments to the jury, and then Lysias, very ingeniously, makes his client tell the simple story of his life.

(This to conciliate the jury and to show that the damage done was not due to any lack of precautions on the owner's side.)