LITTLE HAS BEEN DONE in the way of evaluating the lives of the ancient orators. In the case of the ancient poets scholars like M. LefkowitzI and J. Fairweather2 have conclusively demonstrated that their lives often contain details simply inferred by biographers from the text of their poetry. Athough the line between fact and fiction is not always easily drawn, many of the anecdotes told by biographers about ancient writers seem to have been fabricated from references in their writings.3 In the lives of the ancient orators, by contrast, the same line of demarcation is far more difficult to draw, since, unlike the writings of poets or philosophers, their speeches were partly biographical and autobiographical through the many references to themselves and their opponents. When this evidence concerned public affairs, it could be combined with other testimony, particularly that of