This miniature, full-length rendition of Demosthenes – that great Athenian statesman and orator – is a frequently overlooked masterpiece.
His chiton reveals sloped shoulders and the distinctly unathletic body that famously prevented him from gymnastic pursuits as a child and pushed him into a career as an orator. As part of that precocious training, he honed his elocution by performing vocal exercises with a mouth full of pebbles (I might have to try this). His early career as a speaker in Athens’ law courts didn’t win him abundant friends among his peers, and he seems to have made a name for himself as a irascible (if able) specimen (and in one infamous episode, he was publicly slapped in the face by an adversary).
Later, he directed his ire squarely north, ranting about the danger posed by Philip II of Macedon. In his fiery speeches, Demosthenes at one point blamed his fellow Athenians for enabling this northern tyrant (an oratorical flourish they surely did not appreciate). His warnings fell on deaf ears and, by 338 B.C., mainland Greece was largely steamrolled by the Macedonian juggernaut. Demosthenes’ attempts to incite a revolt in Athens under young Alexander’s early rule did not go well, nor did attempts over a decade later when the 32 year old died in Babylon. (For this last outrage, he was finally threatened with execution, which he stubbornly preempted with suicide).
Decades later, Athens honoured its cantankerous son for his prescient zeal with a full-length portrait in the Agora. His posthumous portraiture is instantly recognisable and survives in numerous copies: his beard is cropped rather short, beetled brow full of consternation, and gaze fixed downward. Other surviving copies have been reconstructed holding a scroll. This little bronze, with hands clasped, seems all together more convincing a format and perhaps the best hint as to the lost original – a moving portrayal of Demosthenes as unyielding patriot, ridiculed in his own time and revered in the next.
