At some time in the second century before Christ ten Attic orators were selected, probably by Apollodorus of Pergamum, as the orators whose speeches were most worthy of preservation and study, and this Canon of the Ten Attic Orators was generally accepted. The Lives of these orators which are contained in manuscripts of Plutarch’s Moralia were certainly not written by Plutarch. They are altogether lacking in the charm which characterizes Plutarch’s careful and elaborate style. Facts are stated one after another with little variety and with little or no distinction between mere anecdotes and matters of real importance; but the Lives are of interest on account of their subject matter.

The decrees appended to the Lives are, except in some details, fairly accurate copies of official documents (see F. Ladek, Wiener Studien, xiii., 1891, pp. Ill ff.). The two which are concerned with Demosthenes and his family are not really decrees, but petitions addressed to the Senate, copies of which were undoubtedly kept among the official records at Athens, whereas the third - that in honour of Lycurgus - is a decree of the people. A large part of the inscription recording this decree has been found and is published in the Inscriptiones Graecae, ii. No. 240 (editio minor, ii. No. 457), Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, third edition, No. 326. The text which has been handed down in the manuscripts of Plutarch varies somewhat from that of the inscription, but hardly more than is to be expected. It may well be that whoever appended the decrees to the Lives of the orators derived them, not directly from inscriptions or other official documents, but (as suggested by B. Keil in Hermes, xxx. pp. 210 ff.) from the work of Heliodorus On Monuments.

The Lives, with the decrees, are published by Anton Westermann in his Biographi Graeci (1833 and 1845).