hear the pleadings. The master, having some acquaintance with the
officers who opened the court, got his young pupil a seat where he
could hear the orators without being seen. Callistratus had great
success, and his abilities were extremely admired. Demosthenes was
fired with a spirit of emulation. When he saw with what distinction
the orator was conducted home, and complimented by the people, he was
struck still more with the power of that commanding eloquence which
could carry all before it. From this time, therefore, he bade adieu to
the other studies and exercises in which boys are engaged, and applied
himself with great assiduity to declaiming, in hopes of being one day
numbered among the orators. Isaeus was the man he made use of as his
preceptor in eloquence, though Isocrates then taught it; whether it was
that the loss of his father incapacitated him to pay the sum of ten
_minae_, which was that rhetorician's usual price, or whether he
preferred the keen and subtle manner of Isaeus as more fit for public
use.

Hermippus says he met with an account in certain anonymous memoirs that
Demosthenes likewise studied under Plato, and received great assistance
from him in preparing to speak in public. 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,