zens of a free state. Many of these had nothing but riches to recommend them, and were pestilent fellows whose idea of life was really nothing better than coarse, vulgar rowdyism.
It was the fate of Demosthenes to come into collision with a man of this class. Early in life, at the time when he was engaged in his suit with his guardians, he provoked the enmity of Meidias, a rich, well-born man, and one of the constant supporters of the peace party of Eubulus. The quarrel between them originated in the following singular way. The brother of Meidias, Thrasylochus, offered, according to a practice allowed at Athens in the case of a trierarchy, or the providing a war-ship for the State, to exchange properties with Demosthenes, and, in the event of the offer being accepted, he gave the guardians privately to understand that the lawsuit should be dropped. In this manner he sought to defeat the legal proceedings which Demosthenes was taking, and, in fact, to get his just claims set aside. The two brothers, it appears, on one occasion actually rushed into his house, behaved with excessive violence, and used coarse and ribald language in the presence of his sister, then a mere girl. For this outrage Demosthenes sued Meidias, and recovered damages; but he had not been able to obtain payment. From that time the man became his bitter enemy, and worried and persecuted him in every possible way. His animosity was all the more virulent as he was also politically opposed to Demosthenes. In the year 351 B.C. both served in a military expedition to Eubœa—Meidias in the cavalry, Demosthenes as a foot soldier. Neither
