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his body for action, letting it lose its powers through sloth and negligence.

Another time, when the assembly had refused to hear him, and he was going home with his head muffled up, taking it very heavily, they relate that Satyrus the actor followed him, and being his familiar acquaintance, entered into conversation with him. To whom when Demosthenes bemoaned himself, that having been the most industrious of all the pleaders, and having almost spent the whole strength and vigour of his body in that employment, he could not find any acceptance with the people,that drunken sots, mariners, and illiterate fellows were heard and had the hustings for their own, while he himself was despised, "You say true, Demosthenes," replied Satyrus, "but I will soon show you the cause of and the remedy for all this, if you will repeat to me some passage out of Euripides or Sophocles." Which when Demosthenes had done, Satyrus taking it up after him, gave the same passage in his rendering such a new form by delivering it in the proper spirit and character, that to Demosthenes it seemed quite another thing. By this being convinced how much grace and ornament language acquires from action, he began to esteem it a small matter and as good as nothing for a man to exercise himself in declaiming, if he neglected enunciation and delivery. Hereupon he built himself a place to study in under ground (which was still remaining in our time), and hither he would come constantly every day to form his action and exercise his voice; and would go on thus very often for two or three months together, shaving one half of his head, that so for shame he might not go from home, though he desired it ever so much.

Nor was this all, but he also made his conversation 8 with people abroad, his common speech, and his business subservient to his studies, taking from hence occasions and arguments as matter to work upon. For as soon as he was parted from his company, down he would go at once into his study, and run over everything in order that had passed and the reasons that might be alleged for and against it. Any speeches also that he was present at, he would go over again with himself and reduce into periods; and whatever others spoke to him or he to them, he would correct, transform, and vary several ways. Hence it was, that he was looked upon as a person of no great natural genius, but one who owed all the skill and ability he had in speaking, to labour and industry. Of the truth of which it was thought to be no small sign, that he was very rarely heard to speak off-hand; but though he were by name frequently called upon by the people, as he sat in the assembly, yet he would not rise unless he had previously considered the subject, and came prepared for it. So that many of the popular pleaders used to make it a jest against him; and Pytheas once, scoffing at him, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp. To which Demosthenes gave the sharp answer, “It is true, Pytheas, that your lamp and mine would tell very different stories." others however he would not much deny it, but would admit that he neither entirely wrote his speeches beforehand, nor yet spoke wholly extempore. And he would affirm, that it was the more truly popular act to use premeditation, such care being a kind of respect to the people; whereas to take no thought how what is said is likely to be received by the audience, shows

To

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something of an oligarchical temper, and is the course of one that intends force rather than persuasion. Of his want of courage and assurance to speak on the moment they make it also another argument, that when he was attacked in a debate, Demades often came forward on the sudden to support him, but he was never observed to do the same for Demades.

Whence then, may some say, was it, that Eschines speaks of him as so astonishing for his boldness in speaking? Or how could it be, when Python the Byzantine with so much confidence and such a torrent of words inveighed against the Athenians, that Demosthenes alone stood up to oppose him? Or, when Lamachus the Myrinæan brought a panegyric upon king Philip and Alexander, full of reproach of the Thebans and Olynthians, and at the Olympic Games recited it publicly, how was it, that he, rising up and recounting historically and demonstratively what benefits and advantages all Greece had received from the Thebans and Chalcidians, and on the contrary what mischiefs the flatterers of the Macedonians had brought upon it, so turned the minds of all that were present, that the sophist, in alarm at the outcry against him, secretly made his way out of the assembly? But Demosthenes, it should seem, regarded other points in the character of Pericles to be unsuited to him; only his reserve and his sustained manner and his forbearing to speak immediately or upon every subject and occasion, as being the things to which principally he owed his greatness, these he followed, and endeavoured to imitate, neither wholly

* These are his own words, quoted from the Oration on the Crown.

neglecting the glory which present occasion offered, nor yet willing too often to expose his faculty to the mercy of chance. For in fact the orations which he spoke, had much more boldness and confidence than those he wrote, if we may believe Eratosthenes, Demetrius the Phalerian, and the comedians. Eratosthenes says that often in his speaking he would be transported into a kind of ecstacy, and Demetrius, that he uttered the famous metrical adjuration to the people,

By the earth, the springs, the rivers, and the streams,

One of the

as a man inspired, and beside himself. comedians gives him a name for his bombast about knickknacks, and another mocks him for his use of antithesis:

And what he took, took back; a phrase to please
The very fancy of Demosthenes.

Unless indeed this also is meant by Antiphanes for a jest upon the speech on Halonesus, which Demosthenes advised the Athenians not to take at Philip's hands, but to take back.*

All however agreed in considering Demades in mere 10 natural gift an orator impossible to surpass, and that in

* Halonesus had belonged to Athens, but had been seized by pirates, from whom Philip took it. He was willing to make a present of it to the Athenians, but Demosthenes warned them not on any account to take it, unless it were expressly understood that they took it back; Philip had no right to give what it was his duty to give back. The distinction thus put was apparently the subject of a good deal of pleasantry. Athenæus quotes five other passages from the comic writers, playing upon it in the same way.

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his speeches made on the moment he excelled all the study and preparation of Demosthenes. Ariston the Chian has recorded a judgment which Theophrastus passed upon the orators; for being asked what sort of orator he thought Demosthenes, he answered, "Worthy of Athens;" and then, what he thought of Demades, he answered, "More than worthy." And the same philosopher records, that Polyeuctus the Sphettian, one of the Athenian politicians about that time, was wont to say, that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the ablest, as he expressed the most sense in the fewest words. And, indeed it is related that Demosthenes himself, as often as Phocion stood up to answer him, would say to his acquaintance, "Here comes the knife to my speech." Yet it does not appear whether he had this feeling for his powers of speaking or for his life and character, meaning that one word or nod from a man who was really trusted, would go further than a thousand lengthy periods from others.

Demetrius the Phalerian tells us, that he was informed by Demosthenes himself, now grown old, that the methods he made use of to remedy his natural bodily infirmities and defects were such as these; his indistinct and slovenly pronunciation he overcame and rendered articulate by repeating passages with pebbles in his mouth; his voice he disciplined by declaiming and reciting speeches or verses when he was out of breath, while running or going up steep places; and that in his house he had a large looking-glass, before which he would stand and go through his exercises. It is told that some one once came to request his assistance as a pleader, and related how he had been assaulted and