This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[4]
No! let there be something in all our writing which, if it does not actually please us,
at least passes muster, so that the file may only
polish our work, not wear it away. There must
[p. 113]
also be a limit to the time which we spend on its
revision. For the fact that Cinna1 took nine years
to write his Smyrna, and that Isocrates required
ten years, at the lowest estimate, to complete his
Panegyric does not concern the orator, whose
assistance will be of no use, if it is so long
delayed.
1 C. Helvius Cinna, the friend of Catullus. The Smyrna was a short but exceptionally obscure and learned epic.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.