As a youth of eighteen years of age, Demosthenes found himself with a known and good family position at Athens, being ranked in the class of richest citizens and liable to the performance of liturgies and trierarchy as his father had been before him;[561] yet with a real fortune very inadequate to the outlay expected from him—embarrassed by a legal proceeding against guardians wealthy as well as unscrupulous—and an object of dislike and annoyance from other wealthy men, such as Meidias and his brother Thrasylochus,[562] friends of those guardians. His family position gave him a good introduction to public affairs, for which he proceeded to train himself carefully; first as a writer of speeches for others, next as a speaker in his own person. Plato and Isokrates were both at this moment in full celebrity, visited at Athens by pupils from every part of Greece; Isæus also, who had studied under Isokrates, was in great reputation as a composer of judicial harangues for plaintiffs or defendants in civil causes. Demosthenes put himself under the teaching of Isæus (who is said to have assisted him in composing the speeches against his guardians), and also profited largely by the discourse of Plato, of Isokrates, and others. As an ardent aspirant he would seek instruction from most of the best sources, theoretical as well as practical—writers as well as lecturers.[563] But besides living teachers, there was one of the past generation who contributed largely to his improvement. He studied Thucydides with indefatigable labor and attention; according to one account, he copied the whole history eight times over with his own hand; according to another, he learnt it all by heart, so as to be able to rewrite it from memory when the manuscript was accidentally destroyed. Without minutely criticising these details, we ascertain at least that Thucydides was the object of his peculiar study and imitation. How much the composition of Demosthenes was fashioned by the reading of Thucydides—reproducing the daring, majestic and impressive phraseology, yet without the overstrained brevity and involutions of that great historian—and contriving to blend with it a perspicuity and grace not inferior to Lysias—may be seen illustrated in the elaborate criticism of the rhetor Dionysius.[564] [561] Position of Demosthenes, πατὴρ τριηραρχικὸς—χρυσέα κρηπὶς, κατὰ Πίνδαρον, etc. (Lucian, Encomium Demosth. vol. iii. p. 499, ed. Reitz.)