Introduction
Demosthenes (384-322 BC), the Athenian, is a household name for his eloquence, but brilliance came by labour. When he began his legal career, his weak and stuttering voice, poor breath control, gawky gestures and muddled sentences caused much amusement among seasoned advocates. Then one day he bumped into an actor named Satyrus, who had him repeat a few lines from Euripides.
DEMOSTHENES did so, whereupon Satyrus, taking up the same speech after him, gave it such a form and recited it with such appropriate sentiment and disposition that it appeared to Demosthenes to be quite another. Persuaded, now, how much of ornament and grace action lends to oratory, he considered it of little or no use for a man to practise declaiming if he neglected the delivery and disposition of his words. After this, we are told, he built a subterranean study, and into this he would descend every day without exception in order to form his action and cultivate his voice, and he would often remain there even for two or three months together, shaving one side of his head in order that shame might keep him from going abroad even though he greatly wished to do so.
Nor was this all, but he would make his interviews, conversations, and business with those outside, the foundation and starting point for eager toil. For as soon as he parted from his associates, he would go down into his study, and there would go over his transactions with them in due order, and the arguments used in defence of each course.
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