[19]
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?1
1 cp. Aristoph. Ach. 530: “Then in his wrath Pericles the Olympian lightened and thundered and threw all Greece into confusion.”
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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