Democles was an Athenian

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 orator, and a contemporary of Demochares

Demochares

Demochares , nephew of Demosthenes, Athenian orator and statesman, was one of the few distinguished Athenians in the period of decline....

, among whose opponents he is mentioned. He was a disciple of Theophrastus

Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...

, and is chiefly known as the defender of the children of Lycurgus

Lycurgus of Athens

Lycurgus was a logographer in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BCE.Lycurgus was born at Athens about 396 BC, and was the son of Lycophron, who belonged...

 against the calumnies of Moerocles

Moerocles

Moerocles was an Athenian orator, native of Salamis. He was a contemporary of Demosthenes, and like him an opponent of the kings Philip and Alexander, and was one of the anti-Macedonian orators whom Alexander demanded to have given up to him after the destruction of Thebes, though he subsequently...

 and Menesaechmus

Menesaechmus

Menesaechmus , an Athenian and an inveterate enemy of the orator Lycurgus, by whom he was impeached on a charge of impiety and convicted. When Lycurgus felt his end drawing near , he had himself brought into the council to give an account of his public conduct, and Menesaechmus was the only man who...

. It seems that in the time of Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

, some orations of Democles were still extant, since that critic attributes to him an oration, which went by the name of Dinarchus

Dinarchus

Dinarchus or Dinarch was a logographer in Ancient Greece. He was the last of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BC.A son of Sostratus , Dinarchus settled at Athens early in life, and...

. It must be observed that Dionysius and the Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

call this orator by the patronymic form of his name, Democleides, so he may be the same person called Democleides who was archon

Archon

Archon is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy, and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In ancient Greece the...

 in 316 BC

316 BC

Year 316 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Rutilus and Laenas...

.

He wrote a treatise on machinery. (Vitruvius

Vitruvius

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....

vii, introduction)