Demosthenes in the Renaissance: A Case Study on the Origins and Development of Scholarship on Athenian Oratory

Demosthenes has been renowned since antiquity as one of the major Athenian orators of the fourth century B.C. His speeches were effectively forgotten in the Latin-speaking west after the fall of the Roman Empire, though they continued to be studied in the Byzantine east. Those speeches were among the first Greek texts to be brought to Italy during the Renaissance, and significant humanists translated some of them into Latin. This essay considers the growth and development of these early humanist studies. Humanists were interested in Demosthenes because of his ancient fame, and because they considered that he could help them improve their own oratory, but overall his place in their range of interests was fairly restricted. Renaissance studies of Demosthenes are significant, however, because they inspired and in some ways influenced later work.