Demosthenes shaved half his head so he could not skip speech practice
Plutarch tells of a young Athenian who dug an underground study, shaved half his head so he would be too embarrassed to go out, and practised talking with pebbles in his mouth. That student became Demosthenes, whom Cicero called the perfect orator. He first took up public speaking to sue the guardians who had squandered his inheritance.
Born in 384 BC, the son of a wealthy sword-maker, Demosthenes was orphaned at seven. His father left an estate of nearly fourteen talents, roughly 220 years of a labourer's wages, but when he came of age in 366 BC the guardians' accounts showed little more than the house, fourteen slaves and thirty silver minae. Too frail for the usual athletic training, he threw himself into rhetoric instead. At 20 he delivered five speeches against his trustees; the court awarded ten talents, though he recovered only part of it.
His delivery needed work. Plutarch describes a weak, indistinct voice and short breath, but he probably had a form of rhotacism, saying l for r. His rival Aeschines mocked him with the nickname Batalus, echoing a legendary Libyan king who spoke in a rush. Early speeches to the Assembly drew jeers for tangled sentences, until an old man told him he sounded like Pericles and an actor named Satyrus took him under his wing. Asked the three most important things in oratory, he supposedly answered delivery, delivery and delivery.
He earned his living writing speeches for other people's lawsuits and once copied out Thucydides eight times by hand, according to Lucian. From 354 BC he turned to politics and spent his best years rallying Athens against Philip II of Macedon, trying and failing to unite the Greek states against Macedonian expansion.
After Philip's death he helped lead a revolt against Alexander the Great, which was crushed. Alexander's regent Antipater later sent men to hunt him down, and in 322 BC Demosthenes took his own life rather than be captured. Ancient critics ranked him among the ten great Attic orators, and Quintilian called him the standard of oratory.
Source: Demosthenes
