en in a narration, and quite a
different one to accuse and get rid of an accusation by arguing. It is
one thing to fix a hearer's attention by a narration, and another to
excite his feelings. "But he uses beautiful language." Is his language
finer than Plato's? Nevertheless it is necessary for the orator whom
we are inquiring about, to explain forensic disputes by a style of
speaking calculated at once to teach, to delight, and to excite.

VI. Wherefore, if there is any one who professes that he intends to
plead causes in the forum, following the style of Thucydides, no one
will ever suspect him of being endowed with that kind of eloquence
which is suited to affairs of state or to the bar. But if he is
content with praising Thucydides, then he may add my vote to his own.
Moreover, even Isocrates himself, whom that divine author, Plato, who
was nearly his contemporary, has represented in the Phaedrus as being
highly extolled by Socrates, and whom all learned men have called a
consummate orator, I do not class among the number of those who are to
be taken for models. For he is not engaged in actual conflict; he is
not armed for the fray; his speeches are made for display, like foils.
I will rather, (to compare small things with great,) bring on the
stage a most noble pair of gladiators. Aeschines shall come on like
aeserninus, as Lucilius says--

"No ordinary man, but fearless all,
And skill'd his arms to wield--his equal match
Pacideianus stands, than whom the world
Since the first birth of man hath seen no greater."

For I do not think that anything can be imagined more divine than that
orator. Now this labour of mine is found fault with by two kinds of
critics. One set says, "But the Greek is better." And I ask them
whether the authors themselves could have clothed their speeches
in better Latin? The others say, "Why should I rather read the
translation than the original?" Yet those same men read the Andria and
the Synephebi; and are not less fond of Terence and Caecilius than of
Menander. They must then discard the Andromache, and the Antiope, and
the Epigoni in Latin. But yet, in fact, they read Ennius and Pacuvius
and Attius more than Euripides and Sophocles. What then is the meaning
of this contempt of theirs for orations translated from the Greek,
when they have no objection to translated verses?

VII. However, let us now come to the task which we have undertaken,
when we have just explained what