harmonious and
well-arranged speech, and say of what character it is; and what sort
of ears those people have who do not understand its character, or
indeed what there is in them that is like men at all, I do not know.
My ears delight in a well-turned and properly finished period of
words, and they like conciseness, and disapprove of redundancy. Why
do I say my ears? I have often seen a whole assembly raise a shout of
approval at hearing a musical sentence. For men's ears expect that
sentences shall be strung together of well-arranged words. This was
not the case in the time of the ancients. And indeed it was nearly the
only thing in which they were deficient: for they selected their words
carefully, and they gave utterance to dignified and sweet sounding
ideas; but they paid little attention to arranging them or filling
them up. "This is what delights me," one of them would say. What are
we to say if an old primitive picture of few colours delights some men
more than this highly finished one? Why, I suppose, the style which
succeeds must be studied again; and this latter style repudiated.

People boast of the names of the ancients. But antiquity carries
authority with it in precedents, as old age does in the lives of
individuals; and it has indeed very great weight with me myself. Nor
am I more inclined to demand from antiquity that which it has not,
than to praise that which it has; especially as I consider what it has
as of more importance than what it has not. For there is more good in
well chosen words and ideas in which they excel, than in the rounding
off of phrases in which they fail. It is after their time that the
working up of the termination of a sentence has been introduced; which
I think that those ancients would have employed, if it had been known
and employed in their day; as since it has been introduced we see that
all great orators have employed it.

LI. But it looks like envy when what we call "number," and the Greeks
[Greek: ruthmos] is said to be employed in judicial and forensic
oratory. For it appears like laying too many plots for the charming
of people's ears if rhythm is also aimed at by the orator in his
speeches. And relying on this argument those critics themselves utter
broken and abrupt sentences, and blame those men who deliver well
rounded and neatly turned discourses. If they blame them because their
words are ill adapted and their sentiments are trifling, they are
right; but if their