Lisia Contro Nicide per inattività: un’interpretazione

This paper aims to reconstruct the main argument of the speech ascribed to Lysias Against Nikides for idleness. First of all, the fragments that constitute the discourse are thoroughly illustrated; after that, previous hypothesis concerning the discourse’s reconstruction (by Gernet and Dreizehnter) are subjected to a careful examination. Specifically, Dreizehnter’s assumptions that this discourse would have been composed on the occasion of a trial for doroxenia (the indictment of a foreigner for bribing the judges to declare him an Athenian citizen), and that the connection with idleness in the sources would hail from a misunderstanding are brought into question. However, a different interpretation of the fragments allows to argue that the subject matter of the suit for which the discourse was composed constitutes an authentic case of a trial for idleness, carried out in the form of a graphè arghias against Nikides, who is suggested to have been a local official, charged in the course of the mandatory account at the end of the appointment’s year (euthyna).