He adds, that Ctesibius used
to say that Demosthenes was privately supplied by Callias the Syracusan
and some others, with the systems of rhetoric taught by Isocrates and
Alcidamus, and made his advantage of them.
When his minority was expired, he called his guardians to account at
law, and wrote orations against them. As they found many methods of
chicane and delay, he had great opportunity, as Thucydides says, to
exercise his talent for the bar. It was not without much pain and some
risk that he gained his cause; and, at last, it was but a very small
part of his patrimony that he could recover. By this means, however,
he acquired a proper assurance and some experience; and having tasted
the honour and power that go in the train of eloquence, he attempted to
speak in the public debates, and take a share in the administration.
As it is said of Laomedon the Orchomenian, that, by the advice of his
physicians, in some disorder of the spleen, he applied himself to
running, and continued it constantly a great length of way, till he had
gained such excellent health and breath that he tried for the crown at
the public games, and distinguished himself in the long course; so it
happened to Demosthenes, that he first appeared at the bar for the
recovery of his own fortune, which had been so much embezzled; and
having acquired in that cause a persuasive and powerful manner of
speaking, he contested the crown, as I may call it, with the other
orators before the general assembly.
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