Using, then, as my main criterion simply that the speeches of Lysias are composed in a pleasing style, I have come to suspect many of the speeches which have been commonly regarded as genuine. I put them to the test and found them spurious, not because there was anything wrong with them in a general way, but because they did not strike me with that characteristic Lysianic charm or with the euphony of that style.

Dionysius was concerned incidentally with problems of ascription and chronology throughout his career as a literary critic. In the early Lysias he shows how, in the absence of internal chronological or other evidence, a developed literary taste could be called into service as the final judge of authorship.