C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Demosthenes (384–322 B.C.)

Demosthenes (dē-mos’thē-nēz). An Athenian orator; born about 384 B.C.; died at Calauria, 322 B.C. Necessity drove him to take up the business of writing pleas and defenses of suitors and defendants in the law courts; afterward he appeared himself in the courts and the assemblies and became a foremost leader of the party of independence against the designs of Philip of Macedon. The ‘Olynthiacs’ and the ‘Philippics’ were part of this warfare; and his greatest speech, ‘On the Crown,’ was a vindication of his course. Sixty orations ascribed to him are extant, but some of them are spurious. (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).

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