Page:Demosthenes (Brodribb).djvu/167



DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR.

has seemed most convenient not to interrupt our sketch of the political career of Demosthenes with any allusions to his purely forensic engagements. He became, comparatively early in life—that is to say, when he was probably under thirty years of age—a very successful pleader in large practice. It may be as well now to give the reader some idea of the work with which he was occupied, and of the speeches which in this capacity he was called on to deliver.

At Athens there was no separate and distinct class answering to our bar. But there were professional orators and rhetoricians in abundance, who made it their business to compose speeches for plaintiffs and defendants. They did not, however, as a rule, make the speeches themselves; they merely prepared them and put them in the hands of their clients, who committed them to memory and then addressed the court. Of course it would often happen that a man felt himself quite unequal to such an ordeal, and would get an experienced speaker to plead for him. Most, however, of the forensic speeches of Demosthenes which have