ABSTRACT

Demosthenes (385/4 or 384/3 to 322) hardly needs an introduction.1 As a logographos, he was highly productive and is regarded as the best of the Greek orators whose works have survived today. He wrote speeches not only for clients in the law courts but also for himself in that arena and in the Assembly. Today, sixty speeches survive in his corpus; however, many of the forensic speeches are spurious and probably by another orator, Apollodorus (at least Speeches 46, 49, 50, 52, 53 and 59). Of his symbouleutic or political orations, Speeches 7 and 17 are by others and Speeches 11 and 13 – and perhaps 10 as well – are possibly later creations. Speech 60, the funeral oration over the dead at the battle of Chaeronea in 338, was regarded as spurious in antiquity (Dion. Hal. Demosthenes 44), and it is likely that what survives today is a poor imitation.