Demosthenes in the context of "Ancient Greek law"

Solon (/ˈsoʊlən/; Ancient Greek: Σόλων; c. 630 – c. 560 BC) was an archaic Athenian statesman, lawmaker, political philosopher, and poet. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece and is credited with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy. Solon's efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline resulted in his constitutional reform overturning most of Draco's laws.

Solon's reforms included debt relief later known and celebrated among Athenians as the seisachtheia (shaking off of burdens). He is described by Aristotle in the Athenian Constitution as "the first people's champion". Demosthenes credited Solon's reforms with starting a golden age.

The Battle of Chaereonea was fought in 338 BC, near the city of Chaeronea in Boeotia, between Macedonia under Philip II and an alliance of city-states led by Athens and Thebes. The battle was the culmination of Philip's final campaigns in 339–338 BC and resulted in a decisive victory for the Macedonians and their allies.

Philip had brought peace to a war-torn Greece in 346 BC by ending the Third Sacred War and separately concluding his ten-year conflict with Athens for supremacy in the north Aegean with the Peace of Philocrates. Philip's much-expanded kingdom, powerful army and plentiful resources then made him the de facto leader of Greece. To many of the fiercely independent city-states, Philip's power after 346 BC was perceived as a threat, especially in Athens, where the politician Demosthenes led efforts to break away from Philip's influence. In 340 BC Demosthenes convinced the Athenian assembly to sanction action against Philip's territories and to ally with the Achaemenids in Byzantium, which Philip was besieging. These actions were against the terms of their treaty oaths and amounted to a declaration of war. In summer 339 BC, Philip therefore led his army towards South Greece, prompting the formation of an alliance of a few southern Greek states opposed to him, led by Athens and Thebes.

Euripides (/jʊəˈrɪpɪdiːz/; Ancient Greek: Eὐριπίδης, romanized: Eurīpídēs, pronounced [eu̯.riː.pí.dɛːs]; c. 480 – c. 406 BC) was a Greek tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three authors of Greek tragedy for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Nineteen plays attributed to Euripides have survived more or less complete, although one of these (Rhesus) is often considered not to be genuinely his work. Many fragments (some of them substantial) survive from most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined: he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.

Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He was referred to by Aristotle as "the most tragic of poets", probably in reference to a perceived preference for unhappy endings, but Aristotle's remark is seen by Bernard Knox as having wider relevance, since "in his representation of human suffering Euripides pushes to the limits of what an audience can stand; some of his scenes are almost unbearable." Focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown, Euripides was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

The Parallel Lives (Ancient Greek: Βίοι Παράλληλοι, Bíoi Parállēloi; Latin: Vītae Parallēlae) is a series of 48 biographies of famous men written in Greek by the Greco-Roman philosopher, historian, and Apollonian priest Plutarch, probably at the beginning of the second century. The lives are arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings.

The surviving Parallel Lives comprises 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman of similar destiny, such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, or Demosthenes and Cicero. There are also four singular Lives, recounting the stories of Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba, and Otho. Traces of other biographies point to an additional twelve single Lives that are now missing.

Satyrus (Ancient Greek: Σάτυρος) of Callatis was a distinguished Peripatetic philosopher and historian, whose biographies of famous people are frequently referred to by Diogenes Laërtius and Athenaeus. He came from Callatis Pontica, as was learned from a Herculaneum papyrus. He lived earlier than the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor (181–146 BC) when his Lives were epitomized by Heraclides Lembus, probably during the 3rd century BC. Athenaeus frequently refers to him as a Peripatetic, but his connection to the Peripatetic school is otherwise unknown. His biographies dealt with many eminent people including kings (Dionysius the Younger, Philip), statesmen (Alcibiades), orators (Demosthenes), poets (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), and philosophers (Bias of Priene, Chilon of Sparta, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Zeno of Elea, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Diogenes, Anaxarchus, Stilpo). He also wrote on the population of Alexandria, and a work On Characters (Περὶ χαρακτήρων). Fragments of his biography of the Athenian dramatist Euripides were found at the end of a papyrus scroll discovered at Oxyrhynchus in the early twentieth century.

The speeches of Pseudo-Demosthenes are those preserved among the speeches of Demosthenes, but not thought to have been authored by him.

Among the Pseudo-Demosthenic works are six of those written for Apollodorus of Acharnae, (46, 49, 50, 52, 53, and 59), all of which seem to have been written by the same author. The author of these speeches has been identified as Apollodorus himself. Demosthenes' speech 45 also concerns Apollodorus, but seems to be genuine. Additionally, speech 47, though it does not concern Apollodorus, was probably written by the same author as these six, which Friedrich Blass considered to be evidence that the speeches were not in fact written by Apollodorus, but an otherwise unknown minor logographer. However, Kapparis considers that speech 46 can only have been composed by Apollodorus, as there is no reason that he would have hired two different logographers, one to compose his first speech and a second to draft his reply to the defence. Kapparis concludes that either speech 46 must be written by Demosthenes or Apollodorus, and as it is stylistically drastically different from Demosthenes' speeches and similar to the other speeches given by Apollodorus, Apollodorus himself must have been the author of these speeches.

Aphidna (Ancient Greek: Ἄφιδνα) or Aphidnae or Aphidnai (Ἀφίδναι) was one of the twelve ancient towns of ancient Attica. It was celebrated in the mythical period as the place where Theseus deposited Helen of Troy, entrusting her to the care of his friend Aphidnus. When the Dioscuri invaded Attica in search of their sister, the inhabitants of Deceleia informed the Lacedaemonians where Helen was concealed, and showed them the way to Aphidna. The Dioscuri thereupon took the town, and carried off their sister. We learn, from a decree quoted by Demosthenes, that Aphidna was, in his time, a fortified town, and at a greater distance than 120 stadia from Athens. As an Attic deme, it belonged in succession to the tribes Aeantis, Leontis, Ptolemais, and Hadrianis.

The site of Aphidna is located at Kotroni near the modern town of Afidnes.

Hypereides or Hyperides (Ancient Greek: Ὑπερείδης, Hypereidēs; c. 390 – 322 BC; English pronunciation with the stress variably on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable) was an Athenian logographer (speech writer). He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BC.

He was a leader of the Athenian resistance to King Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. He was associated with Lycurgus and Demosthenes in exposing pro-Macedonian sympathizers. He is known for prosecuting Philippides of Paiania for his pro-Macedonian measures and his decree in honoring Alexander the Great.