[39]
Those things which I am speaking of are very
important, believe me. Do not you despise this either; everything must be related, and
demonstrated, and explained; the cause must be not merely stated, but it must also be
gravely and copiously dilated on. You must cause, if you wish really to do and to effect
anything, men not only to hear you, but also to hear you willingly and eagerly. And if
nature kind been bountiful to you in such qualities, and if from your childhood you had
studied the best arts and systems, and worked hard at them;—if you had learnt
Greek literature at Athens, not at
Lilybaeum, and Latin literature at Rome, and not in Sicily; still it would be a great undertaking to approach so important a
cause, and one about which there is such great expectation, and having approached it, to
follow it up with the requisite diligence; to have all the particulars always fresh in
your memory; to discuss it properly in your speech, and to support it adequately with
your voice and your faculties.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
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.