[562] See the account given by Demosthenes (cont. Meidiam, p. 539, 540) of the manner in which Meidias and Thrasylochus first began their persecution of him, while the suit against his guardians was still going on. These guardians attempted to get rid of the suit by inducing Thrasylochus to force upon him an exchange of properties (Antidosis), tendered by Thrasylochus, who had just been put down for a trierarchy. If the exchange had been effected, Thrasylochus would have given the guardians a release. Demosthenes could only avoid it by consenting to incur the cost of the trierarchy—20 minæ. [563] Demosthenes both studied attentively the dialogues, and heard the discourse, of Plato (Cicero, Brutus, 31, 121; Orator. 4, 15; Plutarch, Vit. X Orator. p. 844). Tacitus, Dialog. de Orator. c. 32. [564] Dionys. Hal. De Thucydide Judicium, p. 944; De Admirab. Vi. Dicend. Demosthen. p. 982, 983. While thus striking out for himself a bold and original style, Demosthenes had still greater difficulties to overcome in regard to the external requisites of an orator. He was not endowed by nature, like Æschines, with a magnificent voice; nor, like Demades, with a ready flow of vehement improvisation. His thoughts required to be put together by careful preparation; his voice was bad and even lisping—his breath short—his gesticulation ungraceful; moreover he was overawed and embarrassed by the manifestations of the multitude. Such an accumulation of natural impediments were at least equal to those of which Isokrates complains, as having debarred him all his life from addressing the public assembly, and restrained him to a select audience of friends or pupils. The energy and success with which Demosthenes overcame his defects, in such manner as to satisfy a critical assembly like the Athenian, is one of the most memorable circumstances in the general history of self-education. Repeated humiliation and repulse only spurred him on to fresh solitary efforts for improvement. He corrected his defective elocution by speaking with pebbles in his mouth; he prepared himself to overcome the noise of the assembly by declaiming in stormy weather on the sea-shore of Phalerum; he opened his lungs by running, and extended his powers of holding breath by pronouncing sentences in marching up-hill; he sometimes passed two or three months without interruption in a subterranean chamber, practising night and day either in composition or declamation, and shaving one half of his head in order to disqualify himself from going abroad. After several trials without success before the assembly, his courage was on the point of giving way, when Eunomus and other old citizens reassured him by comparing the matter of his speeches to those of Perikles, and exhorting him to persevere a little longer in the correction of his external defects. On another occasion, he was pouring forth his disappointment to Satyrus the actor, who undertook to explain