Institutio Oratoria

Those, however, who criticised him most severely were the speakers who desired to be regarded as the imitators of Attic oratory. This coterie, regarding themselves as the sole initiates in the mysteries of their art, assailed him as an alien, indifferent to their superstitions and refusing to be bound by their laws. Their descendants are among us to-day, a withered, sapless and anemic band.

For it is they that flaunt their weakness under the name of health, in defiance of the actual truth, and because they cannot endure the dazzling rays of the sun of eloquence, hide themselves beneath the shadow of a mighty name. [*](I.e. Attic. ) However, as Cicero himself answered them at length and in a number of

The distinction between the Attic and the Asiatic schools takes us back to antiquity. The former were regarded as concise and healthy, the latter as empty and inflated: the former were remarkable for the absence of all superfluity, while the latter were deficient alike in taste and restraint. The reason for this division, according to some authorities, among them Santra, is to be found in the fact that, as Greek gradually extended its range into the neighbouring cities of Asia, there arose a class of men who desired to distinguish themselves as orators before they had acquired sufficient command of the language, and who consequently began to express by periphrases what could have been expressed directly, until finally this practice became an ingrained habit.

My own view, however, is that the difference between the two styles is attributable to the character both of the orators and the audiences whom they addressed: the Athenians, with their polish and refinement, refused to tolerate emptiness and redundance, while the Asiatics, being naturally given to bombast and ostentation, were puffed up with a passion for a more vainglorious style of eloquence.