Demosthenes (; ; ; 384 – 12 October 322 BC) was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by studying the speeches of previous great orators. He delivered his first judicial speeches at the age of 20, in which he successfully argued that he should gain from his guardians what was left of his inheritance. For a time, Demosthenes made his living as a professional speechwriter (logographer) and a lawyer, writing speeches for use in private legal suits.
Demosthenes grew interested in politics during his time as a logographer, and in 354 BC he gave his first public political speeches. He went on to devote his most productive years to opposing Macedon's expansion. He idealized his city and strove throughout his life to restore Athens's supremacy and motivate his compatriots against Philip II of Macedon. He sought to preserve his city's freedom and to establish an alliance against Macedon, in an unsuccessful attempt to impede Philip's plans to expand his influence southward, conquering the Greek states.
After Philip's death, Demosthenes played a leading part in his city's uprising against the new king of Macedonia, Alexander the Great. However, his efforts failed, and the revolt was met with a harsh Macedonian reaction. To prevent a similar revolt against his own rule, Alexander's successor in this region, Antipater, sent his men to track Demosthenes down. Demosthenes killed himself to avoid being arrested by Archias of Thurii, Antipater's confidant.
The Alexandrian Canon, compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace, called Demosthenes one of the ten greatest Attic orators and logographers. Longinus likened Demosthenes to a blazing thunderbolt and argued that he had "perfected to the utmost the tone of lofty speech, living passions, copiousness, readiness, speed."Longinus, On the Sublime, 12.4, 34.4* D. C. Innes, 'Longinus and Caecilius", 277–279. Quintilian extolled him as ("the standard of oratory"). Cicero said of him that ("among them all, he excels alone"), and also praised him as "the perfect orator" who lacked nothing.Cicero, Brutus, 35 , Orator, II.6 ; Quintillian, Institutiones, X, 1.76 * D. C. Innes, 'Longinus and Caecilius", 277.
Early years and personal life Family and personal life
Demosthenes was born in 384 BC, during the last year of the 98th Olympiad or the first year of the 99th Olympiad.H. Weil, Biography of Demosthenes, 5–6. His father—also named Demosthenes—who belonged to the local tribe, Pandionis, and lived in the deme of PaeaniaAeschines, Against Ctesiphon, 171. in the Athenian countryside, was a wealthy sword-maker.E. Badian, "The Road to Prominence", 11. Aeschines, Demosthenes's greatest political rival, maintained that his mother Kleoboule was a Scythian by bloodAeschines, Against Ctesiphon, 172. —an allegation disputed by some modern scholars. He was also the uncle of the Athenian Orator Demochares. Demosthenes was orphaned at the age of seven. Although his father provided for him well, his legal guardians, Aphobus, Demophon and Therippides, mishandled his inheritance.E. Burke, The Looting of the Estate of the Elder Demosthenes, 61.
Demosthenes started to learn rhetoric because he wished to take his guardians to court and because he was of "delicate physique" and could not receive gymnastic education, which was customary. In Parallel Lives, Plutarch states that Demosthenes built an underground study where he practised speaking and shaving one half of his head so that he could not go out in public. Plutarch also states that he had "an inarticulate and stammering pronunciation" that he overcame by speaking with pebbles in his mouth and by repeating verses when running or out of breath. He also practised speaking in front of a large mirror.
As soon as Demosthenes came of age in 366 BC, he demanded his guardians render an account of their management. According to Demosthenes, the account revealed the misappropriation of his property. Although his father left an estate of nearly fourteen talents (equivalent to about 220 years of a labourer's income at standard wages),D. M. MacDowell, Demosthenes the Orator, ch. 3. Demosthenes asserted his guardians had left nothing "except the house, and fourteen slaves and thirty silver " (30 = ½ talent). At the age of 20 Demosthenes sued his trustees to recover his patrimony and delivered five orations: three Against Aphobus during 363 and 362 BC and two Against Onetor during 362 and 361 BC. The courts fixed Demosthenes's damages at ten talents. When all the trials came to an end, he succeeded in recovering only a portion of his inheritance.E. Badian, "The Road to Prominence", 18.
According to Pseudo-Plutarch, Demosthenes was married once. The only information about his wife, whose name is unknown, is that she was the daughter of Heliodorus, a prominent citizen.Pseudo-Plutarch, Demosthenes, 847c. Demosthenes also had a daughter, "the only one who ever called him father", according to Aeschines in a trenchant remark.Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, 77. His daughter died young and unmarried a few days before Philip II's death.
In his speeches, Aeschines uses pederastic relations of Demosthenes as a means to attack him. In the case of Aristion, a youth from Plataea who lived for a long time in Demosthenes's house, Aeschines mocks the "scandalous" and "improper" relation.Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, 162. In another speech, Aeschines brings up the pederastic relation of his opponent with a boy called Cnosion. The slander that Demosthenes's wife also slept with the boy suggests that the relationship was contemporary with his marriage.Aeschines, On the Embassy, 149 ; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 63.C. A. Cox, Household Interests, 202. Aeschines claims that Demosthenes made money out of young rich men, such as Aristarchus, the son of Moschus, whom he allegedly deceived with the pretence that he could make him a great orator. Apparently, while still under Demosthenes's tutelage, Aristarchus killed and mutilated a certain Nicodemus of Aphidna. Aeschines accused Demosthenes of complicity in the murder, pointing out that Nicodemus had once pressed a lawsuit accusing Demosthenes of desertion. He also accused Demosthenes of having been such a bad to Aristarchus so as not even to deserve the name. His crime, according to Aeschines, was to have betrayed his by pillaging his estate, allegedly pretending to be in love with the youth so as to get his hands on the boy's inheritance. Nevertheless, the story of Demosthenes's relations with Aristarchus is still regarded as more than doubtful, and no other pupil of Demosthenes is known by name.
Education Between his coming of age in 366 BC and the trials that took place in 364 BC, Demosthenes and his guardians negotiated acrimoniously but were unable to reach an agreement, for neither side was willing to make concessions.D. M. MacDowell, Demosthenes the Orator, ch. 3 (passim); At the same time, Demosthenes prepared himself for the trials and improved his oratory skill. According to a story repeated by Plutarch, when Demosthenes was an adolescent, his curiosity was noticed by the orator Callistratus, who was then at the height of his reputation, having just won a case of considerable importance.Plutarch, Demosthenes, 5.1–3. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philologist and philosopher, and Constantine Paparrigopoulos, a major modern Greek historian, Demosthenes was a student of Isocrates;F. Nietzsche, Lessons of Rhetoric, 233–235; K. Paparregopoulus, Ab, 396–398. according to Cicero, Quintillian and the Roman biographer Hermippus, he was a student of Plato.Plutarch, Demosthenes, 5.5. Lucian, a Roman-Syrian rhetorician and satirist, lists the philosophers Aristotle, Theophrastus and Xenocrates among his teachers.Lucian, Demosthenes, An Encomium, 12. These claims are nowadays disputed. According to Plutarch, Demosthenes employed Isaeus as his master in rhetoric, even though Isocrates was then teaching this subject, either because he could not pay Isocrates the prescribed fee or because Demosthenes believed Isaeus's style better suited a vigorous and astute orator such as himself.Plutarch, Demosthenes, 5.4. Curtius, a German archaeologist and historian, likened the relation between Isaeus and Demosthenes to "an intellectual armed alliance".R. C. Jebb, The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos.
It has also been said that Demosthenes' father paid Isaeus 10,000 drachmae (somewhat over 1½ talents) on the condition that Isaeus withdraw from a school of rhetoric he had opened and instead devote himself wholly to Demosthenes, his new pupil. Another version credits Isaeus with having taught Demosthenes without charge.Suda, article Isaeus. According to Sir Richard C. Jebb, a British classical scholar, "the intercourse between Isaeus and Demosthenes as teacher and learner can scarcely have been either very intimate or of very long duration". Konstantinos Tsatsos, a Greek professor and academician, believes that Isaeus helped Demosthenes edit his initial judicial orations against his guardians.K. Tsatsos, Demosthenes, 83. Demosthenes is also said to have admired the historian Thucydides. In the Illiterate Book-Fancier, Lucian mentions eight beautiful copies of Thucydides made by Demosthenes, all in Demosthenes's own handwriting.Lucian, The Illiterate Book-Fancier, 4. These references hint at his respect for a historian he must have assiduously studied.H. Weil, Biography of Demothenes, 10–11.
Speech training
According to Plutarch, when Demosthenes first addressed himself to the people, he was derided for his strange and uncouth style, "which was cumbered with long sentences and tortured with formal arguments to a most harsh and disagreeable excess".Plutarch, Demosthenes, 6.3. Some citizens, however, discerned his talent. When he first left the ekklesia (the Athenian Assembly) disheartened, an old man named Eunomus encouraged him, saying his diction was very much like that of Pericles.Plutarch, Demosthenes, 6.4. Another time, after the ekklesia had refused to hear him and he was going home dejected, an actor named Satyrus followed him and entered into a friendly conversation with him.Plutarch, Demosthenes, 7.1.
As a boy Demosthenes had a speech impairment: Plutarch refers to a weakness in his voice of "a perplexed and indistinct utterance and a shortness of breath, which, by breaking and disjointing his sentences much obscured the sense and meaning of what he spoke." There are problems in Plutarch's account, however, and it is probable that Demosthenes actually suffered from rhotacism, mispronouncing ρ (r) as λ (l).H. Yunis, Demosthenes: On the Crown, 211, note 180. Aeschines taunted him and referred to him in his speeches by the nickname "Batalus", apparently invented by Demosthenes's pedagogues or by the little boys with whom he was playingAeschines, Against Timarchus, 126 ; Aeschines, The Speech on the Embassy, 99. —which corresponded to how someone with that variety of rhotacism would pronounce "Battaros," the name of a legendary Libyan king who spoke quickly and in a disordered fashion. Demosthenes undertook a disciplined programme to overcome his weaknesses and improve his delivery, including diction, voice and gestures.Plutarch, Demosthenes, 6–7. According to one story, when he was asked to name the three most important elements in oratory, he replied "Delivery, delivery and delivery!"Cicero, De Oratore, 3.213 * G. Kennedy, "Oratory", 517–18. It is unknown whether such vignettes are factual accounts of events in Demosthenes's life or merely anecdotes used to illustrate his perseverance and determination.E. Badian, "The Road to Prominence", 16.
Career
Legal career