Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/298

272 HISTORY OF GREECE earned, produced its effect only in conjunction with tht matter of Demosthenes ; his thoughts, sentiments, words, and above all, his sagacity in appreciating and advising on the actual situation. His political wisdom, and his lofty patriotic ideal, arc in tru(h quite as remarkable as his oratory. By what training he attained either the one or the other of these qualities, we are unfortunately not permitted to know. Our informants have little interest in him except as a speaker ; they tell us neither what he learned, nor from whom, nor by what companions, or party-associates, his political point of view was formed. But we shall hardly err in supposing that his attentive meditation of Thucydides supplied him, not merely with force and majesty of expression, but also with that conception of Athens in her foretime which he is per- petually impressing on his countrymen, Athens at the com- mencement of the Peloponnesian war, in days of exuberant energy, and under the advice of her noblest statesman. In other respects, we are left in ignorance as to the mental his- tory of Demosthenes. Before he acquired reputation as a public adviser, he was already known as a logographer, or composer of discourses to be delivered either by speakers in the public assem- bly or by litigants in the Dikastery ; for which compositions he was paid, according to usual practice at Athens. He had also pleaded in person before the Dikastery ; in support of an accusa- tion preferred by others against a law, proposed by Leptines, for abrogating votes of immunity passed by the city in favor of indi- viduals, and restraining such grants in future. Nothing can be more remarkable, in this speech against Leptines, than the inten- sity with which the young speaker enforces the necessity of strict and faithful adherence to engagements on the part of the people, in spite of great occasional inconvenience in so doing. It would appear that he was in habitual association vrith some wealthy youths, among others, with Apollodorus sjn of the wealthy banker, Pasion, whom he undertook to instruct in the art of speak ing. This we learn from the denunciations of his rival, JEschines ; l who accuses him of having thus made his way into various wealthy families, especially where there was an orphan youft and a widowed mother, using unworthy artifices to defraud and 1 <3Sschines cent. Timarch, j. 16, 24.