lessons of history. Whether he came personally under the influence either of
Plato, the philosopher, or of Isocrates, the greatest rhetorical teacher of his
time, and a political pamphleteer of high principles but little practical
insight, is much more doubtful. The two men were almost as different in
temperament and aims as it was possible to be, but Demosthenes' familiarity with
the published speeches of Isocrates, and with the rhetorical principles which
Isocrates taught and followed, can scarcely be questioned.

In the early years of his manhood, Demosthenes undertook the composition of
speeches for others who were engaged in litigation. This task required not only
a very thorough knowledge of law, but the power of assuming, as it were, the
character of each separate client, and writing in a tone appropriate to it; and,
not less, the ability to interest and to rouse the active sympathy of juries,
with whom feeling was perhaps as influential as legal justification. This part,
however, of Demosthenes' career only concerns us here in so far as it was an
admirable training for his later work in the larger sphere of politics, in which
the same qualities of adaptability and of power both to argue cogently and to
appeal to the emotions effectively were required in an even higher degree.

At the time when Demosthenes' interest in public affairs was beginning to take
an active form, Athens was suffering from the recent loss of some of her most
powerful allies. In the year 358 B.C. she had counted within the sphere of her
influence not only the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros (which had been
guaranteed to her by the Peace of Antalcidas in 387), but also the chief cities
of Euboea, the islands of Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Samos, Mytilene in Lesbos, the
towns of the Chersonese, Byzantium (a city of the greatest commercial
importance), and a number of stations on the south coast of Thrace, as well as
Pydna, Potidaea, Methone, and the greater part of the country bordering upon the
Thermaic Gulf. But her failure to observe the terms of alliance, laid down when
the new league was founded in 378, had led to a revolt, which ended in 355 or