Dinarchus

, an orator of Greece, the son of Sostratus, and a disciple of Thcophrastus, was a native of Attica, or of Corinth, and earned a great deal of money by composing harangues, at a time when the city of Athens was without orators. Being accused of receiving bribes from the enemies of the republic, he took to flight, and did not return till fifteen years afterwards, about the year 340 before Christ. Of 64 harangues which, according to Plutarch, he composed, and which Photins says he read, only three have come down to us, in the collection of Stephens, 1575, folio, or in that of Venice, 1513, 3 vols. folio. His oration against Demosthenes is the most remarkable of these, and abounds in personal invective of the grossest kind. Dionysias cf Halicarnassus used to call him Demosthenes the savage, meaning probably that he had some of his eloquence deformed bv his own malice and temper. ²