Institutio Oratoria

If, however, we test such corrupt eloquence by the touchstone of a critical taste, as, for example, we test inferior dyes with sulphur, it will lay aside the false brilliance that deceived the eye and fade to a pallor almost too repulsive to describe. Such passages shine only in the absence of the sunlight, just as certain tiny insects seem transformed in the darkness to little flames of fire. Finally, while many approve of things that are bad, no one disapproves of that which is good.

But the true orator will not merely be able to achieve all the feats of which I have spoken with supreme excellence, but with the utmost ease as well. For the sovereign power of eloquence and the voice that awakens well-deserved applause will

No, our orator, brilliant, sublime and opulent of speech, is lord and master of all the resources of eloquence, whose affluence surrounds him. For he that has reached the summit has no more weary hills to scale. At first the climber's toil is hard, but the higher he mounts the easier becomes the gradient and the richer the soil.

And if by perseverance of study he pass even beyond these gentler slopes, fruits for which none have toiled thrust themselves upon him, and all things spring forth unbidden; and yet if they be not gathered daily, they will wither away. But even such wealth must observe the mean, without which nothing is either praiseworthy or beneficial, while brilliance must be attended by manliness, and imagination by soundness of taste.

Thus the works of the orator will be great not extravagant, sublime not bombastic, bold not rash, severe but not gloomy, grave but not slow, rich but not luxuriant, pleasing but not effeminate, grand but not grandiose. It is the same with other qualities: the mean is safest, for the worst of all faults is to fly to extremes.

After employing these gifts of eloquence in the courts, in councils, in public assemblies and the debates of the senate, and, in a word, in the performance of all the duties of a good citizen, the orator will bring his activities to a close in a manner worthy of a blameless life spent in the pursuit of the noblest of professions. And he will do this, not because he can ever have enough of doing good,

For the orator depends not merely on his knowledge, which increases with the years, but on his voice, lungs and powers of endurance. And if these be broken or impaired by age or health, he must beware that he does not fall short in something of his high reputation as a master of oratory, that fatigue does not interrupt his eloquence, that he is not brought to realise that some of his words are inaudible, or to mourn that he is not what once he was.

Domitius Afer was by far the greatest of all the orators whom it has been my good fortune to know, and I saw him, when far advanced in years, daily losing something of that authority which his merits had won for him; he whose supremacy in the courts had once been universally acknowledged, now pleaded amid the unworthy laughter of some, and the silent blushes of others, giving occasion to the malicious saying that he had rather

faint than finish.

And yet even then, whatever his deficiencies, he spoke not badly, but merely less well. Therefore before ever he fall a prey to the ambush where time lies in wait for him, the orator should sound the retreat and seek harbour while his ship is yet intact. For the fruits of his studies will not be lessened by retirement. Either he will bequeath the history of his own times for the delight of after ages, or will interpret the law to those who seek his counsels, as Lucius Crassus proposes