Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/79

Rh Diogenes was buried beside the gate lying toward the isthmus. There was erected, beside his tomb, a dog of Parian marble. The death of this philosopher happened in the first year of the 114th Olympiad, on the same day that Alexander died at Babylon.

, the foremost orator of all history, was born in Athens about July in the year 385 His father, also named Demosthenes, a manufacturer of swords, was a gentleman widely and justly esteemed. His mother was Cleobule, the daughter of Gylon by a Scythian lady. The father died when the son was about seven years of age, leaving an estate of fourteen or fifteen talents, equal to some $200,000 now. The guardians partly embezzled, partly wasted the property, and the young orator's first law business, occupying several years, was the prosecution of these criminals to recover what he might. His success was but partial, yet his patrimony, with what he earned, always kept him in relative affluence, spite of his expensive tastes and great public and private munificence. As a boy he was weak, and did not avail himself of the physical training then usual among Greek youth of good families. He, however, employed the best teachers in his studies and his mental education was thorough. To Thucydides and the old rhetoricians he was ardently devoted, and these, with personal instruction by the orator Isæus, did most to form his style.

The early years of Demosthenes's manhood were spent in preparing speeches for sale, in instructing pupils in rhetoric, and in the severe and painstaking education of himself as a public speaker. His resolution in overcoming obstacles is much dwelt upon by ancient writers. He at first lisped and stammered and had a weak voice. To cure these faults he enunciated with pebbles in his mouth and declaimed while walking uphill and by the roaring breakers of the sea-shore. He shut himself in an underground study, which he constructed for the purpose, and practised going through long trains of thought there alone. "When he went