On the Murder of Eratosthenes
Hyper tou Eratosthenous Phonou
Athenian law explicitly permits a husband to kill a man he catches committing adultery with his wife inside his own home, and a defendant can win acquittal by showing the killing was exactly this lawful, righteously motivated act rather than a premeditated murder disguised as one.
- Athenian law permitting killing an adulterer caught in the act
- Lysias's plain, naturalistic prose style
- vivid domestic narrative as legal strategy
- window into Athenian household life
- a model of unadorned rhetorical clarity
On the Murder of Eratosthenes, composed by the professional speechwriter Lysias for delivery by a client named Euphiletus, defends a husband on trial for killing the man he caught in bed with his wife, arguing under an Athenian law that explicitly permitted such killings that his act was lawful justice rather than premeditated murder as the prosecution claimed. The speech is prized less for its straightforward legal argument than for its vivid, naturalistic narrative of Euphiletus's domestic life, presented in the plain prose style later praised as a model of unadorned clarity against which other Attic orators were measured.
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