previous next
[26] Well, then, if any man should, in addition to the actual virtues which the great orator Demosthenes [p. 465] possessed, show himself to be the possessor of others, that either owing to his own temperament or the laws of Athens1 Demosthenes is thought to have lacked, and should reveal in himself the power of strongly stirring the emotions, shall I hear one of these critics protesting that Demosthenes never did this? And if he produces something rhythmically superior (an impossible feat, perhaps, but let us assume it to be so), are we to be told that it is not Attic? These critics would show finer feeling and better judgement, if they took the view that Attic eloquence meant perfect eloquence.

1 See II. xvi. 4. Quintilian alludes to an alleged law forbidding Athenian oratos, to appeal to the emotions in the law courts.

Creative Commons License
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.

load focus Latin (Harold Edgeworth Butler, 1922)
hide References (2 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: