[9] Modern classical scholarship accepted the attribution to Critias on the basis of a hypothesis first advanced by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in 1875, and thereafter Hermann Diels, Johann August Nauck, and Bruno Snell, endorsed this ascription for which there is but one source in antiquity.
[10] In 1977, Albrecht Dihle in a major paper challenged this ascription and assigned the work to Euripides, arguing that the fragment comes from the latter's satyr play of this name, produced in 415 BCE.
Scholars that advocate Euripidean authorship include Charles H. Kahn, Ruth Scodel, Martin Ostwald, Jan Bremmer and Harvey Yunis.
[14][15][16] One source in antiquity ascribed the passage to Critias, one of the thirty oligarchs who ruled Athens in the immediate aftermath of the city-state's defeat in the Peloponesian War: two attribute it, or lines in it, to Euripides.
Style plays an important function in the authorship question: if we take it as expressing the view of the sophist Critias, the cynical deconstruction of religion would appear to harmonize perfectly with the character of that historical person, – 'that brilliant but sinister figure in the politics and letters of the end of the fifth century'[21] – who gained a reputation for ruthless unscrupulousness.
κἄπειτά μοι δοκοῦσιν ἅνθρωποι νόμους 5 θέσθαι κολαστάς, ἵνα δίκη τύραννος ᾖ
ἔπειτ᾽ ἐπειδὴ τἀμφανῆ μὲν οἱ νόμοι ἀπεῖργον αὐτοὺς ἔργα μὴ πράσσειν βίᾳ, 10 λάθρᾳ δ᾽ ἔπρασσον, τηνικαῦτά μοι δοκεῖ <πρῶτον> πυκνός τις καὶ σοφὸς γνώμην ἀνήρ <θεῶν> δέος θνητοῖσιν ἐξευρεῖν, ὅπως εἴη τι δεῖμα τοῖς κακοῖσι, κἂν λάθρᾳ πράσσωσιν ἢ λέγωσιν ἢ φρονῶσί <τι>.
τ<οισύτ>ους δε τοὺς λόγους λέγων διδαγμάτων ἥδιστον εἰσηγήσατο 25 ψευδεῖ καλύψας τὴν ἀλήθειαν λόγῳ.