he declaimed on the seashore amid the noise of waves and storms. He would even pass two or three months continuously in a subterranean cell, shaving one side of his head, that he might not be able to show himself in public, to the interruption of his rhetorical exercises. But all this patient and laborious practice did not procure immediate success. No public assembly could be more critical and fastidious than that of Athens. Demosthenes failed repeatedly. One of the old citizens found him on one of these occasions wandering about disconsolately in the Piræus, and tried to cheer him up by saying, "You have a way of speaking which reminds me of Pericles, but you lose yourself through mere timidity and cowardice." Another time he was returning to his home in deep dejection, when Satyrus, a great and popular actor, with whom he was well acquainted, entered into conversation with him. Demosthenes complained that though he was the most painstaking of all the orators, and had almost sacrificed his health to his intense application, yet he could find no favour with the people, and that drunken seamen and other illiterate persons were listened to in preference to himself. "True," replied the actor, "but I will provide you a remedy if you will repeat to me some speech in Euripides or Sophocles." Demosthenes did so, and then Satyrus recited the same speech in such a manner that it seemed to the orator quite a different passage. With the aid of such hints, joined to his own indefatigable industry, he at last achieved a distinct success in the law courts, and his services as an advocate were in great request.
After all, he had not much of which, according to
