Isaeus (1), Athenian speech-writer, c . 420–340s BCE

Isaeus was a logographer (professional speechwriter) working for Athenian litigants in the 4th century bce . Eleven of his twelve extant speeches, and most of the surviving fragments, are concerned with disputed inheritance claims, while speech 12 is from a case of disputed citizenship. Hardly anything is known about Isaeus’s life; he was apparently never involved in any litigation on his own account, or in the political life of Athens, and it is not even certain whether he was an Athenian citizen or a metic. One of the ten “Attic orators” recognized in later antiquity as having classic status, he was reputed to have been a pupil of Isocrates and teacher of Demosthenes. For modern scholars his speeches are an important source of information on social history and family life in 4th-century Athens, as well as on Athenian inheritance law and legal culture, but in comparison with other Athenian orators, notably Demosthenes and Lysias, his work has been relatively neglected. Commentaries published in the last fifty years focus on individual speeches or selections, and the only comprehensive English language commentary on the entire Isaean corpus is still that of William Wyse, published in 1904. Wyse’s work remains influential, although more recent scholars have discredited his extreme scepticism about the reliability of Isaeus’s speeches as a source of Athenian law. Later research has also shed new light on the historical background to some of the speeches.