Demosthenes   

secretly obtained a knowledge of the systems of Isocrates and Alcidamas,
and mastered them thoroughly.
As soon, therefore, as he was grown up to man's estate, he began to
go to law with his guardians, and to write orations against them;
who, in the meantime, had recourse to various subterfuges and pleas
for new trials, and Demosthenes, though he was thus, as Thucydides
says, taught his business in dangers, and by his own exertions was
successful in his suit, was yet unable for all this to recover so
much as a small fraction of his patrimony. He only attained some degree
of confidence in speaking, and some competent experience in it. And
having got a taste of the honour and power which are acquired by pleadings,
he now ventured to come forth, and to undertake public business. And,
as it is said of Laomedon, the Orchomenian, that, by advice of his
physician, he used to run long distances to keep off some disease
of his spleen, and by that means having, through labour and exercise,
framed the habit of his body, he betook himself to the great garland
games, and became one of the best runners at the long race; so it
happened to Demosthenes, who, first venturing upon oratory for the
recovery of his own private property, by this acquired ability in
speaking, and at length, in public business, as it were in the great
games, came to have the pre-eminence of all competitors in the assembly.
But when he first addressed himself to the people, he met with great
discouragements, and 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. Besides, he had, it seems,
a weakness in his voice, 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. So that in the
end being quite disheartened, he forsook the assembly; and as he was
walking carelessly and sauntering about the Piraeus, Eunomus, the
Thriasian, then a very old man, seeing him, upbraided him, saying
that his diction was very much like that of Pericles, and that he
was wanting to himself through cowardice and meanness of spirit, neither
bearing up with courage against popular outcry, nor fitting his body
for action, but suffering it to languish through mere 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 yet find any acceptance
with the people, that drunken sots, mariners, and illiterate fellows
were heard, and had the husting's for their own, while he himself
was despised, "You say true, Demosthenes," replied Satyrus, "but I
will quickly remedy the cause of all this, if you will repeat to me
some passage out of Euripides or Sophocles." Which when Demosthenes
had pronounced, Satyrus presently taking it up after him, gave the
same passage, in his rendering of it, such a new form, by accompanying
it with the proper mien and gesture, 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 to exercise his voice; and here he would continue, oftentimes
without intermission, two or three months together, shaving one half
of his head, that so for shame he might not go abroad, though he desired
it ever so much.
Nor was this all, but he also made his conversation 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