of Isaeus as his guide to the art of speaking, though Isocrates at that
time was giving lessons; whether, as some say, because he was an orphan,
and was not able to pay Isocrates his appointed fee of ten minae, or
because he preferred Isaeus's speaking, as being more business-like and
effective in actual use.

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 honor 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 labor 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 foresook
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 a