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The MouseionDemosthenes

Demosthenes

63 works in the library, 63 with an English translation.

Classical Athenian statesman and orator, born at Upper Paiania. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.

Lived
4th c. BC
Kinds of writing
Oratory (61), Epistolography (2)
Dialect
Attic
Analysed
343,244 words

The 63 works

First the work Demosthenes is best known for; then the works here with a translation and the most familiar vocabulary: the fewest rare words to look up. That is vocabulary only; grammar, dialect and ideas may still be demanding.

The road of the text

Follow the text from Demosthenes's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Ancient tradition / legend This is what ancient writers told; it may not be what happened. Debated among scholars The evidence allows more than one reading, and specialists disagree. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Copies
  • Readers
  • Print and editions
  1. 384 BCThe authorBorn at Athens; his father's family is from Paeania1,2
  2. 18 years later366 BCThe authorComes of age and demands an account from his guardians1
  3. 3 years later363 BCThe authorThe speeches Against Aphobus against his guardians (363–362)1,3
  4. 9 years later354 BCThe authorOn the Navy-Boards, his first speech to the Assembly1
  5. 3 years later351 BCThe authorThe First Philippic (351–350)1,6
  6. 2 years later349 BCThe authorThe three Olynthiacs, urging help for Olynthus against Philip1
  7. 3 years later346 BCThe authorThe Peace of Philocrates; Demosthenes serves on the embassy to Philip1,7,8
  8. 3 years later343 BCThe authorOn the False Embassy: Aeschines is acquitted by thirty votes1,9
  9. 2 years later341 BCThe authorThe Third Philippic10,11
  10. 3 years later338 BCThe authorPhilip defeats Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea; Demosthenes fights in the line and gives the funeral speech1,7,13
  11. 8 years later330 BCThe authorOn the Crown: Aeschines fails to win a fifth of the votes and leaves Athens14,15
  12. 6 years later324 BCThe authorThe Harpalus affair: convicted, fined fifty talents, he escapes into exile1,19 Debated among scholars
  13. 1 year later323 BCThe authorCalled home after Alexander's death1,19
  14. 1 year later322 BCThe authorTakes poison in the temple of Poseidon on Calauria1,20
  15. about 270 years laterc. 50 BCCopiesA papyrus of On the Crown 167–169 is written in Egypt, in the first century BC; it is now at Princeton23
  16. about 10 years laterc. 40 BCReadersDidymus, at Alexandria, writes on the speeches (second half of the first century BC)24
  17. about 240 years laterc. AD 200CopiesA student copies Didymus' notes on four of the speeches onto the papyrus that survives (late second or early third century AD)24
  18. about 690 years laterc. AD 890CopiesThe Paris manuscript S (Grec 2934), the most trusted copy of the speeches, is written at the end of the ninth century26,27
  19. about 360 years laterc. 1250CopiesS belongs to the monastery of Sosandra in Bithynia (thirteenth century)26
  20. about 250 years later1499Print and editionsThe Letters are first printed, in an Aldine collection of Greek letters at Venice29
  21. 5 years later1504Print and editionsAldus Manutius prints the speeches at Venice22,29
  22. about 390 years later1892Print and editionsHenri Omont publishes a facsimile of S (1892–93)26
  23. 11 years later1903Print and editionsButcher's first volume of the Oxford text (the Greek in the reader; completed by Rennie in 1931)35
  24. 1 year later1904ReadersDidymus' commentary becomes known from the papyrus24
  25. 98 years later2002Print and editionsDilts's new Oxford text begins (four volumes, 2002–2009)28

Life and work

Checked against sources · 2 October 2026

Demosthenes was born in Athens in 384 BC and died in 322, and he is widely counted among the greatest orators of all time.1 His father, also called Demosthenes, came from the village of Paeania in the Athenian countryside.1,2 He was a wealthy sword-maker, and he died when his son was a boy.1 In the boy's own words, his father left “an estate of nearly fourteen talents”, a widow, a daughter of five and “a son, myself, aged seven”.3

The guardians helped themselves. When Demosthenes came of age in 366 BC he demanded an account, and in 363–362 he took them to court in three speeches Against Aphobus.1 The court awarded him ten talents, but he got back only part of his inheritance;1 Plutarch says “he was able to recover not even a small fraction of his patrimony”, though he did gain practice and confidence in speaking.4

Making an orator

Ancient tradition / legend The stories of his training are famous, and nobody knows how many are true.1 Plutarch says his first speeches to the people were jeered, his sentences “confused by long periods”. He dug himself an underground study and practised there for months on end, “shaving one side of his head” so that shame would keep him indoors. One rival, Pytheas, scoffed that his arguments “smelt of lamp wicks”.4 Plutarch got the most famous story from Demetrius of Phalerum, who said he had it from Demosthenes himself in old age: to cure his weak speech he practised “taking pebbles in his mouth and then reciting speeches”, and he trained his voice by speaking while running or climbing steep slopes.5 Asked what came first in oratory, another life reports, “he replied Delivery, and what the second, Delivery, and the third, Delivery”.2

Against Philip

He made his first speech to the Assembly in 354 BC, On the Navy-Boards.1 From then on one danger filled his speeches: Philip II of Macedon. In the First Philippic (351–350) he told the Athenians that “for a free people there can be no greater compulsion than shame for their position”. Even if Philip died, he warned, “you will soon raise up a second Philip”, so long as they went on neglecting their affairs.1,6 In 349, when Philip attacked Olynthus, an ally of Athens, the three Olynthiacs urged them to help; Olynthus fell all the same.1

In 346 Athens made peace with Philip, the Peace of Philocrates,7 and Demosthenes sat on the embassy that went to Philip's court with Aeschines and Philocrates.1 Debated among scholars Aeschines, who became his greatest rival,1 later told the court how Demosthenes fared when his turn came to speak before the king: “he suddenly stopped speaking and stood helpless; finally he collapsed completely”.8 It is a story told by a rival, in a lawsuit.

In 343 Demosthenes prosecuted Aeschines in On the False Embassy, and Aeschines was acquitted by thirty votes.1 Plutarch was not even sure there had been a trial: “Whether the speech denouncing the treacherous embassage of Aeschines was delivered or not, is uncertain”.9 In 341 came the Third Philippic,10 with its cry «τεθνάναι δὲ μυριάκις κρεῖττον ἢ κολακείᾳ τι ποιῆσαι Φιλίππου», “Better to die a thousand times than pay court to Philip”.11

Late in 339 Philip marched into central Greece and took the town of Elatea.7 Demosthenes remembered the moment nine years later: “Evening had already fallen when a messenger arrived bringing to the presiding councillors the news that Elatea had been taken”.12 He went as an envoy to Thebes and won the Thebans over to an alliance with Athens.1 That August the allies met Philip at Chaeronea and were crushed.7 Demosthenes fought in the line as an ordinary soldier.1 Plutarch says he “forsook his post, cast away his arms, and ran away most disgracefully”, and that Philip, drunk after the victory, chanted the opening words of Demosthenes' decree as if it were verse: “Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes, of Paeania, thus moves”.13 Yet the Athenians gave him “the honour of pronouncing the eulogy over the men” who had died.13

The crown

In 336 a citizen called Ctesiphon proposed that Athens honour Demosthenes with a golden crown. Aeschines attacked the proposal as illegal, and the case came to court in 330.1,14 Demosthenes' reply, On the Crown, defended his whole career.14 The jury acquitted so decisively that Aeschines “did not get a fifth part of their ballots”, and he left Athens to teach rhetoric in Rhodes and Ionia.15

At the speech's height Demosthenes swears by the dead of the Persian Wars that Athens was right to fight at Chaeronea, even in defeat: «μὰ τοὺς Μαραθῶνι προκινδυνεύσαντας τῶν προγόνων», “I swear it by our forefathers who bore the brunt of warfare at Marathon”.16 The critic known as Longinus singled out this oath. Demosthenes spoke, he says, «καθάπερ ἐμπνευσθεὶς ἐξαίφνης ὑπὸ θεοῦ», “as if suddenly inspired by a god” (our translation).17 Elsewhere Longinus compares Demosthenes to a thunderbolt and Cicero to a fire that spreads everywhere.1,18

Gold, exile and poison

Debated among scholars In 324 Harpalus, who had run off with treasure entrusted to him by Alexander the Great, came to Athens.1 Plutarch tells how Demosthenes admired a golden cup among the treasure and Harpalus said: “For you it will amount to twenty talents”.19 An inquiry by the council of the Areopagus named Demosthenes; he was convicted, fined fifty talents, and escaped into exile.1,19 Whether he really took the money is still argued: George Grote thought him innocent, while Mogens Hansen thinks it likely that he was justly found guilty.1 Leaving Athens, Plutarch says, he complained to Athena of her three most intractable beasts, “the owl, the serpent, and the people”.19

When Alexander died in 323 the Athenians called him home, sending a trireme to fetch him, and paid off his fine by a trick: they gave him the contract to adorn the altar of Zeus the Saviour for fifty talents.19 He did not enjoy his city for long. Antipater crushed the Greek revolt, and on the motion of Demades the Athenians condemned Demosthenes to death.20 He took refuge in the temple of Poseidon on the island of Calauria. When Antipater's man Archias came for him, he asked to write a letter, and, in the story Plutarch takes from Ariston, “he put his pen to his mouth and bit it”; the poison was already working when he walked out past the altar and fell.20 Plutarch knew other versions too: the poison hidden in a cloth, or in a hollow bracelet.20

Some forty years after his death, in the year Gorgias was archon (about 280 BC), Athens set up a bronze statue of him in the market-place, at his nephew Demochares' request,2 with the verses “If thy strength had only been equal to thy purposes, Demosthenes, Never would the Greeks have been ruled by a Macedonian Ares”. Plutarch says those who claim Demosthenes wrote them himself “talk utter nonsense”;20 the Lives of the Ten Orators reports, on the word of Demetrius of Magnesia, that he did.2

At Rome, Demosthenes inspired Cicero's speeches against Mark Antony,1 and Plutarch notes that “Cicero himself entitled his speeches against Antony Philippics”.21 Quintilian ranked him far the first of the Greek orators and paene lex orandi, almost the very standard of oratory.38

How the words reached us

Manuscripts & transmission

Passed from hand to hand

Published in his lifetime. Demosthenes put many, perhaps all, of his speeches into circulation himself. After his death copies survived in Athens and in the Library of Alexandria.1,22 There the scholar Callimachus collected fifty-six openings of speeches, the Prologues, and believed them genuine.22

Papyri. A scrap from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, written in the first century BC and now at Princeton, holds On the Crown 167–169; it was first published in 1915.23 In the text we read, section 167 is a letter of Philip's that the clerk reads out to the court. Like the other ancient papyri of Demosthenes, Didymus' text (below) shows no marked leaning towards any one group of the medieval manuscripts.24

A scholar at work. Didymus, a scholar of Alexandria in the second half of the first century BC, wrote notes on the speeches. Until 1904 little of his vast output was known; then a papyrus turned up with his notes on speeches 9, 10, 11 and 13, “the only extensive ancient commentary on a Greek prose author”. A student copied it in the late second or early third century AD.24 Debated among scholars Scholars disagree about him. One older view holds he was a careful compiler rather than an original researcher;25 Phillip Harding argues that he gathered evidence for his own views.24

The manuscripts. Scholars have recorded 258 Byzantine manuscripts of the speeches, and 21 more of extracts. Modern editions rest above all on four of them, known by letters: F in Venice (Marcianus 416), A in Munich (Monacensis 485), Y in Paris (Parisinus 2935) and S, also in Paris.22 S, now Grec 2934 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is a parchment book of 534 leaves written at the end of the ninth century, probably in Constantinople. In the thirteenth century it belonged to the monastery of Sosandra in Bithynia; in the sixteenth it passed from Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi to Catherine de' Medici and, at the end of that century, to the French royal library. Henri Omont published a facsimile of it in 1892–93.26 One study of the manuscripts calls S “universally accepted as having the greatest authority for the corpus Demosthenicum”.27 The newest Oxford editor, Mervin Dilts, also uses a manuscript called Q, and in a few places in speeches 19 to 24 one called P.28

Print. The Letters were printed first, in 1499, in an Aldine collection of letters edited by Marcus Musurus; the speeches followed from Aldus Manutius at Venice in 1504.29 The Aldine was based on three manuscripts of F's family, not on F itself, which is why the speeches are still arranged in that family's order.22

Textual variants

Where the copies disagree

S against the rest. Editors have long quarrelled over whether to follow S, a ninth-century parchment book in Paris, or the other old manuscripts, A, F and Y. Dilts, in the new Oxford text, refuses to favour either side across the board and decides each case on its merits.28

Gaps between vowels. When one word ends in a vowel and the next begins with one, the clash is called hiatus. From the nineteenth century editors printed Demosthenes with hiatus strictly removed. Dilts prints the words in full wherever S and A, or one of them, write them so, and hiatus appears on the page far more often. His reviewer points out that the old consistency had no basis in any copy, medieval or ancient.28

Documents read out in court. In On the Crown the clerk reads out decrees, letters and other documents, and our text includes them: the indictment at 54–55, for example, or Ctesiphon's decree at 118.31 These documents are found in the major manuscripts and in some papyri, but Harvey Yunis shows that they are not genuine, and leaves them out of his edition; his reviewer Ian Worthington doubts that Demosthenes included any documents when he revised the speech for circulation.30

Words not in every manuscript. The Third Philippic contains passages that are not in all the manuscript traditions; it has been suggested that they were added later by another writer.22

Debated among scholars Which speeches are his? The Lives of the Ten Orators says: “Sixty-five genuine speeches of Demosthenes are current”.2 Sixty-one speeches survive under his name, with fifty-six prologues and six letters, and the authorship of the letters is hotly debated.1 Modern doubts go much further. Arnold Schaefer accepted only twenty-nine speeches as genuine.22 Friedrich Blass disputed the Fourth Philippic, the Funeral Speech, the Erotic Essay and two private speeches, and J. H. Vince counted five of the political speeches as spurious, among them On the Treaty with Alexander.1

Speeches for Apollodorus. Plutarch believed Demosthenes wrote speeches for Apollodorus, a banker's son, and also wrote For Phormio for Apollodorus' opponent, selling to both sides, “as it were from one and the same cutlery-shop”, the knives to wound each other.9 Seven speeches written for Apollodorus survive in the collection, and six of them are now generally given to another writer, often identified as Apollodorus himself.32

A joke on the wrong man? In On Halonnesus the speaker argues that Philip wants to make Athens a present of the island when he ought to restore it, though either way the Athenians will have it «ἄν τε λάβητε ἄν τʼ ἀπολάβητε», “whether it is presented or restored to you”.33 Plutarch wondered whether a comic poet's jest about taking and retaking was aimed at Demosthenes, who told the Athenians “not to take the island from Philip, but to retake it”.34 Yet the speech is now thought to be the work of another politician, Hegesippus, by “virtually everyone”.22

A letter from the enemy. Speech 12 does not even claim to be by Demosthenes: it is a letter from Philip to the Athenians, and Douglas MacDowell believed it is really Philip's.22

Books to read it in

  • S. H. Butcher and W. Rennie, Demosthenis Orationes, 3 vols in 4 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903–31).28,35 The Greek text in the reader is Perseus's copy of this edition.
  • J. H. Vince, C. A. Vince, A. T. Murray, N. W. DeWitt and N. J. DeWitt, Demosthenes, with English translation (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press).35 The English translations in the reader are Perseus's copies of these volumes, in printings of 1926 to 1949.
  • M. R. Dilts, Demosthenis Orationes, 4 vols (Oxford Classical Texts, 2002–2009).28 The new Oxford text, with a list of the papyri and of ancient quotations of the speeches.
  • The Budé edition of Demosthenes, 13 vols (1924–87).28
  • H. Yunis, Demosthenes: On the Crown (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, 2001).30 Greek text, introduction and commentary for students.
  • D. M. MacDowell, Demosthenes: Against Meidias (Oxford, 1990) and On the False Embassy (Oxford, 2000).30 Full editions of two single speeches.
  • E. M. Harris, Demosthenes, Speeches 20–22 (The Oratory of Classical Greece 12, University of Texas Press, 2008).36 A modern English translation with introductions and notes.
  • P. Harding, Didymos: On Demosthenes (Clarendon Ancient History Series, Oxford, 2006).24 The ancient commentary on papyrus, with Greek text, translation and notes.
  • I. Worthington, Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece (Oxford University Press, 2013).37 A full modern life, which calls him a hero, but “a flawed one”.

Where this comes from

Sources (38)
  1. Wikipedia, Demosthenes (his life and career with dates; the Harpalus debate; the stories of his training; the numbers of speeches, prologues and letters; doubts of Blass and Vince; Longinus, Cicero and Quintilian)
  2. Plutarch (attributed), Lives of the Ten Orators: Demosthenes, in the reader
  3. Demosthenes, Against Aphobus I 4, in the reader
  4. Plutarch, Demosthenes 4.2–8.4, in the reader (the guardians, his first speeches, the underground study)
  5. Plutarch, Demosthenes 11.1–11.2, in the reader (the pebbles, after Demetrius of Phalerum)
  6. Demosthenes, First Philippic 10–11, in the reader
  7. Wikipedia, Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC) (the Peace of Philocrates in 346; the battle in August 338)
  8. Aeschines, On the Embassy 34–35, in the reader
  9. Plutarch, Demosthenes 15.1–15.3, in the reader (the speeches for Apollodorus; the doubtful trial of Aeschines)
  10. Wikipedia, Third Philippic (341 BC)
  11. Demosthenes, Third Philippic 65, in the reader
  12. Demosthenes, On the Crown 169, in the reader
  13. Plutarch, Demosthenes 20.2–21.2, in the reader (Chaeronea; Philip's chant; the funeral speech)
  14. Wikipedia, On the Crown (Ctesiphon's proposal of 336; the trial of 330)
  15. Plutarch, Demosthenes 24.1–24.2, in the reader (the verdict; Aeschines leaves Athens)
  16. Demosthenes, On the Crown 208, in the reader
  17. Longinus, On the Sublime 16.2, in the reader (Greek only)
  18. Longinus, On the Sublime 12.4, in the reader (Greek only)
  19. Plutarch, Demosthenes 25.1–27.6, in the reader (Harpalus, exile and return)
  20. Plutarch, Demosthenes 28.1–30.5, in the reader (the death sentence, Calauria, the statue)
  21. Plutarch, Cicero 48.4, in the reader
  22. Wikipedia, Works of Demosthenes (the manuscripts S, F, A and Y; the Aldine's manuscripts; the Prologues; authorship of the speeches)
  23. Princeton University Library, Demosthenes, De corona 167–169: AM 9051 (P. Oxy. XI 1377), first century BC
  24. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.04.16, Judson Herrman on P. Harding, Didymos: On Demosthenes (Oxford, 2006)
  25. Wikipedia, Didymus Chalcenterus (the papyrus of the commentary, after Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars)
  26. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Archives et manuscrits: Grec 2934 (Demosthenes; end of the ninth century; its history; Omont's facsimile)
  27. D. S. McGay, The manuscript tradition of Demosthenes' oration 54, Contra Cononem (dissertation, Fordham University): abstract
  28. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2006.09.28, Michael Weissenberger on M. R. Dilts, Demosthenis Orationes, vol. 2 (in German): the manuscripts, S against A F Y, hiatus, the older editions
  29. Wikipedia, List of editiones principes in Greek (Demosthenes, Aldus, Venice, 1504; the letters in the Aldine collection of 1499)
  30. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2001.09.19, Ian Worthington on H. Yunis, Demosthenes: On the Crown (Cambridge, 2001)
  31. Demosthenes, On the Crown 54–55, in the reader (the indictment as read out)
  32. Wikipedia, Apollodorus of Acharnae (the speeches written for him)
  33. On Halonnesus 5, in the reader
  34. Plutarch, Demosthenes 9.5, in the reader
  35. Perseus's copies of Demosthenes shown in the reader: each file's header names its edition (Butcher, Clarendon Press 1903 and 1907; Rennie, 1921 and 1931; the Vinces, Murray and the DeWitts, Harvard University Press, 1926–49)
  36. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.12.13, Michele Faraguna on E. M. Harris, Demosthenes, Speeches 20–22 (Texas, 2008)
  37. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.04.48, Johannes Engels on I. Worthington, Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece (Oxford, 2013)
  38. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 10.1.76, in Latin (The Latin Library): Demosthenes far the first, and almost the standard of oratory

We checked every statement above against these sources on 2 October 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

In The Painted Stoa

Entries that quote or point to Demosthenes's Greek.

Love, sex and marriageA Greek marriage was a deal between two households, made so that a man would have legitimate children to inherit his house.The householdA Greek oikos was more than a house.SlaveryGreek cities had slaves, and classical Athens, the city that invented democracy, had a great many.Women's livesAlmost everything we read about Greek women was written by men.

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