Institutio Oratoria

Let no one, however, regard the advice I have given as to the attention due to the development of character and the study of the law as being impugned by the fact that we are familiar with many who, because they were weary of the toil entailed on those who seek to scale the heights of eloquence, have betaken themselves to the study of law as a refuge for their indolence. Some of these transfer their attention to the praetor's edicts or the civil law, [*]( The piraetor's edicts were displayed on a whitened board ( in albo ), while the headings of the civil law were written in red. ) and have preferred to become specialists in formulae, or legalists, as Cicero [*](de Or. I. iv. 231. ) calls them, on the pretext of choosing a more useful branch of study, whereas their real motive was its comparative easiness.

Others are the victims of a more arrogant form of sloth; they assume a stern air and let their beards grow, and, as though despising the precepts of oratory, sit for a while in the schools of the philosophers, that, by an assumption of a severe mien before the public gaze and by an affected contempt of others they may assert their moral superiority, while leading a life of debauchery at home. For philosophy may be counterfeited, but eloquence never.