Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. He idealized his city and strove throughout his life to restore Athens’ supremacy and motivate his compatriots against Philip II of Macedon. He took his own life, to avoid being arrested by Antipater’s confidant Archias of Thurii. The Alexandrian Canon compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace recognised him as one of the ten greatest Attic orators.

About Demosthenes in brief

Demosthenes was a Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess. He idealized his city and strove throughout his life to restore Athens’ supremacy and motivate his compatriots against Philip II of Macedon. He took his own life, to avoid being arrested by Antipater’s confidant Archias of Thurii. The Alexandrian Canon compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace recognised him as one of the ten greatest Attic orators and logographers. The only information about his wife, whose name is unknown, is that she was the daughter of Heliodorus, according to Pseudo-Plutarch, who only called him ‘the only one’ who ever ever called him a’man of talents’ and ‘a great orator’ He was born in 384 BC, during the last year of the 98th Olympiad or the first year of the 99th  O Olympiad. His father belonged to the local tribe, Pandionis, and lived in the deme of Paeania in the Athenian countryside, was a wealthy sword-maker. He was orphaned at the age of seven, and his legal guardians, Aphobus, Demophon and Therippides, mishandled his inheritance. He learned 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 he built an underground study where he practised speaking and shaving one half of his head so that he could not go out in public. Longinus likened Demosthene to a blazing thunderbolt and argued that he was ‘perfected to the utmost the tone of lofty speech, living passions, copiousness, readiness, speed’ Cicero said of him that inter omnis unus excellat, and also acclaimed him as ‘the perfect orator’ who lacked nothing. He died in 322 BC, and is buried in the Acropolis in Athens, along with his father and his mother, Kleoboule, who was a Scythian by blood. He left an estate of nearly 14 talents, but asserted his guardians left nothing except the house, and fourteen slaves and thirty silver minae. The courts fixed damages at ten years of his age, and he only succeeded in retrieving a portion of his inheritance when all the trials came to an end. He also had a daughter, who he called ‘the one who called him the only one who ever called me a man of talents, and once once married a prominent citizen, Heliodorus’, according to Pseudo-plutarch. He had a son, who died in 373 BC, and a daughter who was called ‘Theaena’, who he left to his daughter, Aeschines.

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