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biography
pronunciation:
[demostheneez]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.383–322 BC)
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| biography:
| The greatest of the Greek orators, the son of a rich Athenian arms manufacturer. After studying rhetoric and legal procedure, he took up the law as a profession, becoming first a speech-writer, then an assistant to prosecutors in public (state) trials. In c.354 BC he entered politics, but did not gain prominence until 351 BC, when he delivered the first of a long series of passionate speeches (the ‘First Philippic’) advocating all-out resistance to Philip of Macedon. Swayed by his oratory, the Athenians did eventually go to war (340 BC), only to be thoroughly defeated at Chaeronea (338 BC). Put on trial by the peace party of Aeschines, he fully vindicated himself in his oratorical masterpiece, On the Crown. He was exiled for embezzlement in 325 BC, and committed suicide after the failure of the Athenian revolt from Macedon following Alexander's death. |
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