Institutio Oratoria

Finally, how little the heavenly boon of reason avails those who are born dumb. If therefore we have received no fairer gift from heaven than speech, what shall we regard as so worthy of laborious cultivation, or in what should we sooner desire to excel our fellow-men, than that in which mankind excels all other living things?

And we should be all the more eager to do so, since there is no art which yields a more grateful recompense for the labour bestowed upon it. This will be abundantly clear if we consider the origins of oratory and the progress it has made; and it is capable of advancing still further.

I will not stop to point out how useful and how becoming a task it is for a good man to defend his friends, to guide the senate by his counsels, and to lead peoples or armies to follow his bidding; I merely ask, is it not a noble thing, by employing the understanding which is common to mankind and the words that are used by all, to win such honour and glory that you seem not to speak or plead, but rather, as was said of Pericles, to thunder and lighten? [*](cp. Aristoph. Ach. 530: Then in his wrath Pericles the Olympian lightened and thundered and threw all Greece into confusion. )