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Afterwards, betaking himself to the affairs of the commonwealth, and finding the people divided into two different factions, one in favor of Philip, and the other standing for the liberty and properties of the people, he took part with them that opposed Philip, and always persuaded the citizens to help those who were in danger and trouble by Philip’s oppression; taking for his companions in council Hyperides, Nausicles, Polyeuctus, and Diotimus; and then he drew the Thebans, Euboeans, Corcyraeans, Corinthians, Boeotians, and many more into a league with the Athenians. Being in the assembly one day and his memory failing him, his oration was hissed; which made him return home very heavy and melancholy; and being met by Eunomus the Thriasian, an old man, by him he was comforted and encouraged. But he was chiefly animated by Andronicus the player, who told him that his orations were excellent, but that he wanted something of action, thereupon rehearsing certain places out of his oration which he had delivered in that same assembly. Unto which Demosthenes gave good ear and credit, and he then betook himself to Andronicus. And therefore, when he was afterwards asked what was the first part of oratory, he answered, Action; and which was the second, he replied, Action; and which was the third, he still answered, Action. Another time, declaiming publicly, and using expressions too youthful for one of his years and gravity, he was laughed at, and ridiculed by the comedians, Antiphanes and Timocles, who in derision used to repeat such phrases as these, as uttered by him: By the earth, by the fountains, by the rivers, by the floods! For having sworn thus in presence of the people, he raised a tumult about him. He likewise used to swear by Asclepius, and accented the second syllable (Ἀσκλήπιος)This name was properly pronounced with the accent on the last syllable, Ἀσκληπιός (G.) through some mistake, and yet afterwards defended it; for this Asclepius, he said, was called ἤπιος that is a mild God. This also often caused him to be interrupted. But all these things he reformed in time, being sometime conversant with Eubulides, the Milesian philosopher. Being on a time present at the Olympic games, and hearing Lamachus the Myrrhinaean sound the praises of Philip and of Alexander the Great, his son, and decry the cowardice of the Thebans and Olynthians, he stood up in their defence against him, and from the ancient poets he proclaimed the great and noble achievements of the Thebans and Olynthians; and so elegantly he behaved himself in this affair, that he at once silenced Lamachus, and made him convey himself immediately out of the assembly. And even Philip himself, when he had heard what harangues he made against him, replied, that if he had heard him, he should have chosen him general in the war against himself. He was used to compare Demosthenes’s orations to soldiers, for the force they carried along with them; but the orations of Isocrates to fencers, because of the theatrical delight that accompanied them.
