Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero

These, then, are the memorable incidents in the recorded careers of Demosthenes and Cicero which have come to our knowledge. And though I have renounced the comparison of their oratorical styles,[*](See the Demosthenes, iii. 1. ) yet this, I think, ought not to be left unsaid, namely, that Demosthenes devoted to the rhetorical art all the powers of speech which he possessed by nature or acquired by practice, surpassing in force and effectiveness his rivals in forensic and judicial pleading, in pomp and majesty of utterance the professional declaimers, and in precision and skill the sophists;

Cicero, on the other hand, became widely learned and had a variety of interest in the pursuit of letters, and left behind him not a few philosophical treatises of his own conforming to the fashion of the Academy; indeed, even in the speeches which he wrote for the forum and the courts he clearly desires to display by the way a considerable acquaintance with letters.

It is possible, too, to get a glimpse of the character of each in his style of speaking. For that of Demosthenes, which had no prettiness or pleasantry, and was condensed with a view to power and earnestness, did not smell of lamp-wicks, as Pytheas scoffingly said,[*](Cf. the Demosthenes, viii. 3.) but of water-drinking and anxious thought, and of what men called the bitterness and sullenness of his disposition;