At the age of fifteen ¹ —his father, according to one account, being dead ² —Lysias went to Thurii, accompanied certainly by his eldest brother Polemarchos; perhaps also by Euthydêmos ³ . At Thurii, where he passed his youth and early manhood, he is said to have studied rhetoric under Tisias ⁴ of Syracuse, himself the pupil of Korax, reputed founder of the art. If, as is likely, Tisias was born about 485 B. C. and did not go to Athens till about 418, there is nothing impossible in this account. At any rate it is probable that Lysias had lessons from some teacher of the Sicilian school, a school the trammels of which his maturer genius so thoroughly shook off. The overthrow of the Athenian arms in Sicily brought into power an anti-Athenian faction at Thurii. Lysias and his brother, with three hundred persons accused of ‘Atticising ⁵ ,’ were driven out, and fled to Athens in 412 B. C. ⁶ . A tradition, idle, indeed, but picturesque, connected the Athenian disaster in Sicily with the last days of Lysias in southern Italy. To him was ascribed a speech, possessed by the ancients, in which the captive general Nikias implored the mercy of his Sicilian conquerors ⁷ .