DEMOSTHENES, the son of Demosthenes by Cleobule, the daughter of Gylon, was a Paeanian by descent. He was left an orphan by his father, when he was but seven years old, together with a sister of the age of five. Being kept by his mother during his nonage, he went to school to Isocrates, say some; but the generality are of opinion that he was pupil to Isaeus the Chalcidian, who lived in Athens and was Isocrates’s scholar. He imitated Thucydides and Plato, and some affirm that he more especially attended the school of Plato. Hegesias the Magnesian writes, that he entreated his master’s leave to go to hear Callistratus the son of Empaedus, an Amphidnean, a noble orator, and sometime commander of a troop of horse, who had dedicated an altar to Mercury Agoraeos, and was to make an oration to the people. And when he heard him, he became a lover of oratory, and so long as he continued at Athens, remained his disciple. But Callistratus being soon banished to Thrace, and Demosthenes arrived at some years of maturity, he joined with Isocrates and Plato. After this, he took Isaeus into his house, and for the space of four years labored very hard in imitation of his orations. Though Ctesibius in his book of philosophy affirms that, by the help of Callias the Syracusan, he got the orations of Zoilus the Amphipolite, and by the assistance of Charicles the Carystian those also of Alcidamas, and devoted himself to the imitation of them. When he came to age, in the year of Timocrates[19] he called his tutors and guardians to account for their maladministration, in not allowing him what was fitting and requisite out of his estate. And these tutors or guardians were three, Aphobus, Therippides, and Demophon (or Demeas), the last of whom, being his uncle, he charged more severely than the other two. He arrested each of them in an action of ten talents, and cast them, but did not exact of them what the law had given him, releasing some for money and others for favor. When Aristophon, by reason of his age, could not hold the office any longer, he was chosen choregus, or overseer of the dances. During the execution of which office, Midias the Anagyrasian striking him as he was ordering the dances in the theatre, he sued him upon it, but let fall his suit upon Midias’s paying him three thousand drachms.