Demosthenes had still greater difficulties to overcome in regard to the
external requisites of an orator
'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
AEschines, 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.... The energy and
success with which Demosthenes overcame his defects, in such manner as
to satisfy a critical assembly like the Athenians, 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.'[3] Yet all this effort and sacrifice were
accompanied by repeated and humiliating failures; and it was not until
he was twenty-seven years of age that the great orator of the world
achieved his first success before the Athenian assembly.
