cture
would take the opinion of men who were incapable of making a picture,
though not devoid of acuteness in judging of one. But if they place
all their intelligence in a certain fastidiousness of ear, and if
nothing lofty or magnificent ever pleases them, then let them say that
they want something subtle and highly polished, and that they despise
what is dignified and ornamented; but let them cease to assert that
those men alone speak in the Attic manner, that is to say, in a
sound and correct one. But to speak with dignity and elegance and
copiousness is a characteristic of Attic orators. Need I say more? Is
there any doubt whether we wish our oration to be tolerable only, or
also admirable? For we are not asking now what sort of speaking is
Attic: but what sort is best. And from this it is understood, since
those who were Athenians were the best of the Greek orators, and since
Demosthenes was beyond all comparison the best of them, that if any
one imitates them he will speak in the Attic manner, and in the
best manner, so that since the Attic orators are proposed to us for
imitation, to speak well is to speak Attically.

V. But as there was a great error as to the question, what kind of
eloquence that was, I have thought that it became me to undertake a
labour which should be useful to studious men, though superfluous
as far as I myself was concerned. For I have translated the most
illustrious orations of the two most eloquent of the Attic orators,
spoken in opposition to one another: Aeschines and Demosthenes. And I
have not translated them as a literal interpreter, but as an orator
giving the same ideas in the same form and mould as it were, in words
conformable to our manners; in doing which I did not consider it
necessary to give word for word, but I have preserved the character
and energy of the language throughout. For I did not consider that
my duty was to render to the reader the precise number of words, but
rather to give him all their weight. And this labour of mine will have
this result, that by it our countrymen may understand what to require
of those who wish to be accounted Attic speakers, and that they may
recal them to, as it were, an acknowledged standard of eloquence.

But then Thucydides will rise up; for some people admire his
eloquence. And they are quite right. But he has no connexion with the
orator, which is the person of whom we are in search. For it is
one thing to unfold the actions of m