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390 390 On the Birth-Year of Demosthenes, also mentions that it was in the year of Timocrates that Demosthenes gained his cause against his guardians : eirl TijuoKpaTov^ eiXe tov^ eTTLTpoirov^. " Between Dexitheus (B. C. 38^), and Timocrates (B. C. S6^), Mr Clinton ob- serves, are twenty archons. Between Dexitheus and Calli- machus (B. C. 34-|-) are thirty-five archons. According to this chronology then Demosthenes was born B. C. 385^ was in his twenty-second year when he prosecuted his guardians, and in his thirty- seventh at the time of the Olynthian war.**' Dionysius of Halicarnassus dates the orator's birth four years later, in the archonship of Demophilus, 01. 99. 4. He says (ad Amm. 4) ovto^ eyevvrjOfj juev eviavTw Trporepov Tfjg €KaTO(TTrj^ OXv/ULTTiado^^ hpyovTo^^ ce TifxoKpaTovs 6:9 ero^ rjv €ixpepr]K(jo^ eTTTaKaioeKaTov * crjjuLoaiov^ re Xoyovg rjp^aro ypa(peiv eiri KaWiaTparov apyovro^^ eiKOdTov Kal irejxTrrov e-ywv eTo%* Mr Clinton observes, that, as there are sixteen archons between Demophilus and Timocrates, and twenty- five between Demophilus and Callistratus, Demosthenes, though he might be said to be seventeen in the year of Timocrates, could not be called twenty-five in the year of Callistratus, and he therefore proposes to correct the text of Dionysius, and to read ei/cocrroV Kal gktov e'^wv eros*. And certainly if by the words as we now read them Dionysius meant, that Demosthenes only completed his twenty-fourth year in the archonship of Callistratus, we must either adopt Mr Clinton's correction, or charge Dionysius with an oversight ; and indeed he repeats the expression in a subsequent passage (c. 7) : o /xe^' eiKOGTov Kai TrefXTrrov 6T09 e^ft^r rjp^aro -noXiTeveadcu Ka crj^T^yope^Lv. At all events, as Mr Clinton observes, " according to Dionysius, Demosthenes was born B. C. 381, was seventeen at the prosecution of his guardians, twenty-six at the time of his first public cause, and thirty-two at the period of the Olynthian war.'' A third account, differing by a year from that of Diony- sius, is furnished by Aulus Gellius, who (N. A. xv. 28). describes Demosthenes as twenty-seven (septem et viginti annos natus) at the time of the oration ap-ainst Androtion, which, as well as that against Leptines, Dionysius (ad Amm. 4). assigns to the year of Callistratus: and GeUius adds that he died at the age of sixty : (vixerunt alter tres