Demosthenes

(384 BC - 322 BC)

The son of a rich sword maker, Demosthenes grew up to be one of the greatest orators of Ancient Greece. He allegedly copied out Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War eight times to absorb the history and mastery of language within, and his “On the Crown” speech, in which he called rival Aeschines an “idle babbler,” has been called “the greatest speech of the greatest orator in the world.”