was as active as his body was feeble. He studied grammar and rhetoric,
as did the sons of wealthy Athenians in general. And while still a mere
boy he begged his tutors to take him to hear Callistratus, an able
public speaker, who was to deliver an oration on some weighty political
subject. The speech, delivered with all the eloquence of manner and
logic of thought which marked the leading orators of that day, deeply
impressed the susceptible mind of the eager lad, who went away doubtless
determining in his own mind that he would one day, too, move the world
with eloquent and convincing speech.
As he grew older there arose a special reason why he should become able
to speak for himself. His father, who was also named Demosthenes, had
been a rich man. He was a manufacturer of swords or knives, in which he
employed thirty-two slaves; and also had a couch or bed factory,
employing twenty more. His mother was the daughter of a rich
corn-dealer of the Bosphorus.
The father died when his son was seven years old, leaving his estate in
the care of three guardians. These were rich men, and relatives and
friends, whom he thought he could safely trust; the more so as he left
them legacies in his will. Yet they proved rogues, and when Demosthenes
became sixteen years of age--which made him a man under the civil law of
Athens--he found that the guardians had made way with nearly the whole
of his estate. Of fourteen talents bequeathed him there were less than
two left. The boy complained and remonstrated in vain. The guardians
declared that the will was lost; their accounts were plainly fraudulent;
they evidently proposed to rob their ward of his patrimony.
This may seem to us to have been a great misfortune. It was, on the
contrary, the greatest good fortune. It forced Demosthenes to become an
orator. Though he never recovered his estate, he gained a fame that was
of infinitely greater value. The law of Athens required that every
plaintiff should plead his own cause, either in person or by a deputy
speaking his words. Demosthenes felt that he must bring suit or consent
to be robbed. That art of oratory, towards which he had so strong an
inclination, now became doubly important. He must learn how to plead
eloquently before the courts, or remain the poor victim of a party of
rogues. This determined the young student of rhetoric. He would make
himself an orator.
He at once began an energetic course of study. There were then two
famous teachers of oratory in Athens, Isocrates and Isaeus. The school of
Isocrates was famous, and his prices very high. The young man, with whom
money was scarce, offered him a fifth of his price for a fifth of his
course, but Isocrates replied that his art, like a good fish, must be
sold entire. He then turned to Isaeus, who was the greatest legal pleader
of the period, and studied under him until he felt competent to plead
his own case before the courts.
Demosthenes soon found that he had mistaken his powers. His argument was
formal and long-winded. His uncouth style roused the ridicule of his
hearers. His voice was weak, his breath short, his manner disconnected,
his utterance confused. His pronunciation was stammering and
ineffective, and in the end he withdrew from the court, hopeless and
disheartened.
Fortunately, his feeble effort had been heard by a friend who was a
distinguished actor, and was able to tell Demosthenes what he lacked.
"You must study the art of graceful gesture and clear and distinct
utterance," he said. In illustration, he asked the would-be orator to
speak some passages from the poets Sophocles and Euripides, and then
recited them himself, to show how they should be spoken. He succeeded in
this way in arousing the boy to new and greater efforts. Nature,
Demosthenes felt, had not meant him for an orator. But art can sometimes
overcome nature. Energy, perseverance, determination, were necessary.
These he had. He went earnestly to work; and the story of how he worked
and what he achieved should be a lesson for all future students of art
or science.
There were two things to do. He must both write well and speak well.
Delivery is only half the art. Something worth delivering is equally
necessary. He read the works of Thucydides, the great historian, so
carefully that he was able to write them all out from memory after an
accident had destroyed the manuscript. Some say he wrote them out eight
separate times. He attended the teachings of Plato, the celebrated
philosopher. The repulse of Isocrates did not keep the ardent student
from his classes. His naturally capable mind became filled with all that
Greece had to give in the line of logical and rhetorical thought. He not
only read but wrote. He prepared orations for delivery in the law courts
for the use of others, and in this way eked out his small income.
In these ways he cultivated his mind. That was the lightest task. He had
a great mind to begin with. But he had a weak and incapable body. If he
would succeed that must be cultivated too. There was his lisping and
stammering voice, his short breath, his low tones, his ungraceful
gesture,--all to be overcome. How he did it is a remarkable example of
what may be done in self-education.
To overcome his stammering utterance he accustomed himself to speak with
pebbles in his mouth. His lack of vocal strength he overcame by running
with open mouth, thus expanding his lungs. To cure his shortness of
breath he practised the uttering of long sentences while walking
rapidly up-hill. That he might be able to make himself heard above the
noise of the assembly, he would stand in stormy weather on the sea-shore
at Phalerum, and declaim against the roar of the waves. For two or three
months together he practised writing and speaking, day and night, in an
underground chamber; and that he might not be tempted to go abroad and
neglect his studies he shaved the hair from one side of his head. Dread
of ridicule kept him in till his hair had grown again. To gain a
graceful action, he would practise for hours before a tall mirror,
watching all his movements, and constantly seeking to improve them.
Several years passed away in this hard and persistent labor. He tried
public speaking again and again, each time discouraged, but each time
improving,--and finally gained complete success. His voice became strong
and clear, his manner graceful, his delivery emphatic and decisive, the
language of his orations full of clear logic, strong statement, cutting
irony, and vigorous declamation, fluent, earnest, and convincing. In
brief, it may be said that he made himself the greatest orator of
Greece, which is equal to saying the greatest orator of the world.
It was not only in delivery that he was great. His speeches were as
convincing when read as when spoken. Fortunately, the great orators of
those days prepared their speeches very carefully before delivery, and
so it is that some of the best of the speeches of Demosthenes have come
down to us and can be read by ourselves. The voice of the whole world
pronounces these orations admirable, and they have been studied by every
great orator since that day.
Demosthenes had a great theme for his orations. He entered public life
at a critical period. The states of Greece had become miserably weak and
divided by their jealousies and intrigues. Philip of Macedon, the
craftiest and ablest leader of his time, was seeking to make Greece his
prey, and using gold, artifice, and violence alike to enable him to
succeed in this design. Against this man Demosthenes raised his voice,
thundering his unequalled denunciations before the assembly of Athens,
and doing his utmost to rouse the people to the defence of their
liberties. Philip had as his advocate an orator only second to
Demosthenes in power, AEschines by name, whom he had secretly bribed, and
who opposed his great rival by every means in his power. For years the
strife of oratory and diplomacy went on. Demosthenes, with remarkable
clearness of vision, saw the meaning of every movement of the cunning
Macedonian, and warned the Athenians in orations that should have moved
any liberty-loving people to instant and decisive action. But he talked
to a weak audience. Athens had lost its old energy and public virtue. It
could still listen with lapsed breath to the earnest appeals of the
orator, but had grown slow and vacillating in action. AEschines had a
strong party at his back, and Athens procrastinated until it was too
late and the liberties of ancient Greece fell, never to rise again, on
the fatal field of Chaeronea.
"If Philip is the friend of Greece we are doing wrong," Demosthenes had
cried. "If he is the enemy of Greece we are doing right. Which is he? I
hold him to be our enemy, because everything he has hitherto done has
benefited him and hurt us."
The fall of Greece before the sword of its foe taught the Athenians that
their orator was right. They at length learned to esteem Demosthenes at
his full worth, and Ctesiphon, a leading Athenian, proposed that he
should receive a golden crown from the state, and that his extraordinary
merit and patriotism should be proclaimed in the theatre at the great
festival of Dionysus.
AEschines declared that this was unconstitutional, and that he would
bring action against Ctesiphon for breaking the laws. For six years the
case remained untried, and then AEschines was forced to bring his suit.
He did so in a powerful speech, in which he made a bitter attack on the
whole public life of Demosthenes. When he ceased, Demosthenes rose, and
in a speech which is looked upon as the most splendid master-piece of
oratory ever produced, completely overwhelmed his life long opponent,
who left Athens in disgust. The golden crown, which Demosthenes had so
nobly won, was his, and was doubly deserved by the immortal oration to
which it gave birth, the grand burst of eloquence "For the Crown."
In 323 B.C. Alexander the Great died. Then like a trumpet rang out the
voice of Demosthenes, calling Greece to arms. Greece obeyed him and
rose. If she would be free, now or never was the time. The war known as
the Lamian war began. It ended disastrously in August, 322, and Greece
was again a Macedonian slave. Demosthenes and others of the patriots
were condemned to death as traitors. They fled for their lives.
Demosthenes sought the island of Calauri, where he took refuge in a
temple sacred to Poseidon, or Neptune. Thither his foes, led by Archias,
formerly a tragic actor, followed him.
Archias was not the man to hesitate about sacrilege. But the temple in
which Demosthenes had taken refuge was so ancient and venerable that
even he hesitated, and begged him to come out, saying that there was no
doubt that he would be pardoned.
Demosthenes sat in silence, his eyes fixed on the ground. At length, as
Archias continued his appeals, in his most persuasive accents, the
orator looked up and said,----
"Archias, you never moved me by your acting. You will not move me now by
your promises."
At this Archias lost his temper, and broke into threats.
"Now you speak like a real Macedonian oracle," said Demosthenes, calmly.
"Before you were acting. Wait a moment, then, till I write to my
friends."
With these words Demosthenes rose and walked back to the inner part of
the temple, though he was still visible from the front. Here he took out
a roll of paper and a quill pen, which he put in his mouth and bit, as
he was in the habit of doing when composing. Then he threw his head back
and drew his cloak over it.
The Thracian soldiers, who followed Archias, began to gibe at his
cowardice on seeing this movement. Archias went in, renewed his
persuasions, and begged him to rise, as there was no doubt that he would
be well treated. Demosthenes sat in silence until he felt in his veins
the working of the poison he had sucked from the pen. Then he drew the
cloak from his face and looked at Archias with steady eyes.
"Now," he said, "you can play the part of Creon in the tragedy as soon
as you like, and cast forth my body unburied. But I, O gracious
Poseidon, quit thy temple while I yet live. Antipater and his
Macedonians have done what they could to pollute it."
He walked towards the door, calling on those surrounding to support his
steps, which tottered with weakness. He had just passed the altar of the
god, when, with a groan, he fell, and died in the presence of his foes.
So died, when sixty-two years of age, the greatest orator, and one of
the greatest patriots and statesmen, of ancient times,--a man whose fame
as an orator is as great as that of Homer as a poet, while in foresight,
judgment, and political skill he had not his equal in the Greece of his
day. Had Athens possessed any of its old vitality he would certainly
have awakened it to a new career of glory. As it was, even one as great
as he was unable to give new life to that corpse of a nation which his
country had become.
_THE OLYMPIC GAMES._
The recent activity of athletic sports in this country is in a large
sense a regrowth from the ancient devotion to out-door exercises. In
this direction Greece, as also in its republican institutions, served as
a model for the United States. The close relations between the athletics
of ancient and modern times was gracefully called to attention by the
reproduction of the Olympic Games at Athens in 1896, for which purpose
the long abandoned and ruined Stadion, or foot-race course, of that city
was restored, and races and other athletic events were conducted on the
ground made classic by the Athenian athletes, and within a marble-seated
amphitheatre in which the plaudits of Athens in its days of glory might
in fancy still be heard.
These modern games, however, differ in character from those of the past,
and are attended with none of the deeply religious sentiment which
attached to the latter. The games of ancient Greece were national in
character, were looked upon as occasions of the highest importance, and
were invested with a solemnity largely due to their ancient institution
and long-continued observance. Their purpose was not alone friendly
rivalry, as in modern times, but was largely that of preparation for
war, bodily activity and endurance being highly essential in the hand
to hand conflicts of the ancient world. They were designed to cultivate
courage and create a martial spirit, to promote contempt for pain and
fearlessness in danger, to develop patriotism and public spirit, and in
every way to prepare the contestants for the wars which were, unhappily,
far too common in ancient Greece.
[Illustration: THE MODERN OLYMPIC GAMES IN THE STADIUM.]
Each city had its costly edifices devoted to this purpose. The Stadion
at Athens, within whose restored walls the modern games took place, was
about six hundred and fifty feet long and one hundred and twenty-five
wide, the race-course itself being six hundred Greek feet--a trifle
shorter than English feet--in length. Other cities were similarly
provided, and gymnastic exercises were absolute requirements of the
youth of Greece,--particularly so in the case of Sparta, in which city
athletic exercises formed almost the sole occupation of the male
population.
But the Olympic Games meant more than this. They were not national, but
international festivals, at whose celebration gathered multitudes from
all the countries of Greece, those who desired being free to come to and
depart from Olympia, however fiercely war might be raging between the
leading nations of the land. When the Olympic Games began is not known.
Their origin lay far back in the shadows of time. Several peoples of
Greece claimed to have instituted such games, but those which in later
times became famous were held at Olympia, a town of the small country of
Elis, in the Peloponnesian peninsula. Here, in the fertile valley of
the Alpheus, shut in by the Messenian hills and by Mount Cronion, was
erected the ancient Stadion, and in its vicinity stood a great
gymnasium, a palaestra (for wrestling and boxing exercises), a hippodrome
(for the later chariot races), a council hall, and several temples,
notably that of the Olympian Zeus, where the victors received the olive
wreaths which were the highly valued prizes for the contests.
This temple held the famous colossal statue of Zeus, the noblest
production of Greek art, and looked upon as one of the wonders of the
world. It was the work of Phidias, the greatest of Grecian sculptors,
and was a seated statue of gold and ivory, over forty feet in height.
The throne of the king of the gods was mostly of ebony and ivory, inlaid
with precious stones, and richly sculptured in relief. In the figure,
the flesh was of ivory, the drapery of gold richly adorned with flowers
and figures in enamel. The right hand of the god held aloft a figure of
victory, the left hand rested on a sceptre, on which an eagle was
perched, while an olive wreath crowned the head. On the countenance
dwelt a calm and serious majesty which it needed the genius of a Phidias
to produce, and which the visitors to the temple beheld with awe.
The Olympic festival, whose date of origin, as has been said, is
unknown, was revived in the year 884 B.C., and continued until the year
394 A.D., when it was finally abolished, only to be revived at the city
of Athens fifteen hundred years later. The games were celebrated after
the completion of every fourth year, this four year period being called
an "Olympiad," and used as the basis of the chronology of Greece, the
first Olympiad dating from the revival of the games in 884 B.C.
These games at first lasted but a single day, but were extended until
they occupied five days. Of these the first day was devoted to
sacrifices, the three following days to the contests, and the last day
to sacrifices, processions, and banquets. For a long period single
foot-races satisfied the desires of the Eleans and their visitors. Then
the double foot-race was added. Wrestling and other athletic exercises
were introduced in the eighth century before Christ. Then followed
boxing. This was a brutal and dangerous exercise, the combatants' hands
being bound with heavy leather thongs which were made more rigid by
pieces of metal. The four-horse chariot-race came later; afterwards the
pancratium (wrestling and boxing, without the leaded thongs); boys'
races and wrestling and boxing matches; foot-races in a full suit of
armor; and in the fifth century, two-horse chariot-races. Nero, in the
year 68 A.D., introduced musical contests, and the games were finally
abolished by Theodosius, the Christian emperor, in the year 394 A.D.
Olympia was not a city or town. It was simply a plain in the district of
Pisatis. But it was so surrounded with magnificent temples and other
structures, so adorned with statues, and so abundantly provided with the
edifices necessary to the games, that it in time grew into a locality of
remarkable architectural beauty and grandeur. Here was the sacred grove
of Altis, where grew the wild olive which furnished the wreaths for the
victors, a simple olive wreath forming the ordinary prize of victory; in
the four great games the victor was presented with a palm branch, which
he carried in his right hand. Near this grove was the Hippodrome, where
the chariot-races took place. The great Stadion stood outside the temple
enclosure, where lay the most advantageous stretch of ground.
The training required for participants in these sacred games was severe.
No one was allowed to take part unless he had trained in the gymnasium
for ten months in advance. No criminal, nor person with any blood
impurity, could compete, a mere pimple on the body being sufficient to
rule a man out. In short, only perfect and completely trained specimens
of manhood were admitted to the lists, while the fathers and relatives
of a contestant were required to swear that they would use no artifice
or unfair means to aid their relative to a victory. The greatest care
was also taken to select judges whose character was above even the
possibility of bribery.
Women were not permitted to appear at the games, and whoever disobeyed
this law was to be thrown from a rock. On certain occasions, however,
their presence was permitted, and there were a series of games and races
in which young girls took part. In time it became the custom to
diversify the games with dramas, and to exhibit the works of artists,
while poets recited their latest odes, and other writers read their
works. Here Herodotus read his famous history to the vast assemblage.
Victory in these contests was esteemed the highest of honors. When the
victor was crowned, the heralds loudly proclaimed his name, with those
of his father and his city or native land. He was also privileged to
erect a statue in honor of his triumph at a particular place in the
sacred Altis. This was done by many of the richer victors, while the
winners in the chariot-races often had not only their own figures, but
those of their chariots and horses, reproduced in bronze.
In addition to the Olympic, Greece possessed other games, which, like
the former, were of great popularity, and attracted crowds from all
parts of the country. The principal among these were the Pythian,
Nemean, and Isthmian games, though there were various others of less
importance. Of them all, however, the Olympic games were much the oldest
and most venerated, and in the laws of Solon every Athenian who won an
Olympic prize was given the large reward of five hundred drachmas, while
an Isthmian prize brought but one hundred drachmas.
On several occasions the Olympic games became occasions of great
historical interest. One of these was the ninetieth Olympiad, of 420
B.C., which took place during the peace between Athens and Sparta,--in
the Peloponnesian war Athens having been excluded from the two preceding
ones. It was supposed that the impoverishment of Athens would prevent
her from appearing with any splendor at this festival, but that city
astonished Greece by her ample show of golden ewers, censers, etc., in
the sacrifice and procession, while in the chariot-races Alcibiades far
distanced all competitors. One well-equipped chariot and four usually
satisfied the thirst for display of a rich Greek, but he appeared with
no less than seven, while his horses were of so superior power that one
of his chariots won a first, another a second, and another a fourth
prize, and he had the honor of being twice crowned with olive. In the
banquet with which he celebrated his triumph he surpassed the richest of
his competitors by the richness and splendor of the display.
On the occasion of the one hundred and fourth Olympiad, war existing
between Arcadia and Elis, a combat took place in the sacred ground
itself, an unholy struggle which dishonored the sanctuary of Panhellenic
brotherhood, and caused the great temple of Zeus to be turned into a
fortress against the assailants. During this war the Arcadians plundered
the treasures of these holy temples, as those of the temple at Delphi
were plundered at a later date.
Another occasion of interest in the Olympic games occurred in the
ninety-ninth Olympiad, when Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, sent his
legation to the sacrifice, dressed in the richest garments, abundantly
furnished with gold and silver plate, and lodged in splendid tents.
Several chariots contended for him in the races, while a number of
trained reciters and chorists were sent to exhibit his poetical
compositions before those who would listen to them. His chariots were
magnificent, his horses of the rarest excellence, the delivery of his
poems eloquently performed; but among those present were many of the
sufferers by his tyranny, and the display ended in the plundering of
his gold and purple tent, and the disgraceful lack of success of his
chariots, some of which were overturned and broken to pieces. As for the
poems, they were received with a ridicule which caused the deepest
humiliation and shame to their proud composer.
[Illustration: THE THEATRE OF BACCHUS, ATHENS.]