Dinarchus
Dinarchus (c. 360-c. 290 BC), the youngest of the ten Attic Orators, was an Athenian metic, or foreign resident, who was asked to help in the prosecutions surrounding the Harpalus affair (324 BC), since many of the other leading orators were implicated themselves. After 322 he made a very profitable career as a logographer, writing speeches for others.
life and Works
Dinarchus was born in Corinth and moved to Athens to study with Theophrastus. As a metic he could not have a political role himself, and so he worked as a logographer with enough success that when the Athenians needed help with prosecutions during the Harpalus affair, he was selected. All three of his surviving speeches are connected with this affair, including a rather mediocre Against Demosthenes. The affair boosted his reputation, and after 322, when all the other leading Attic orators were dead, his services as a logographer were much in demand and he became extremely wealthy. In 307 he retired to Chalcis in order to safeguard his wealth. He returned to Athens in 292 and died sometime thereafter.Significance
Dinarchus has had a generally low reputation in antiquity and today. The main characterization of his style is that he does a poor imitation of Demosthenes: one ancient critic calls him “small-beer Demosthenes.” Although Worthington has recently urged a higher assesment of Dinarchus’ ability, he is usually seen as exemplifying the decline of oratory after the great age of Demosthenes and his contemporaries.-
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Kennedy, George, “Oratory” in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature I: Greek Literature. Ed. by P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox (Cambridge 1985), pp. 498-526.
Worthington, Ian, A Historical Commentary on Dinarchus: Rhetoric and Conspiracy in Later Fourth-Century Athens. Ann Arbor 1992.