y own
countrymen,--I still recollect that I by far prefer Demosthenes to all
other men, inasmuch as he adapted his energy to that eloquence which
I myself feel to be such, and not to that which I have ever had any
experience of in any actual instance. He was an orator than whom
there has never existed one more dignified, nor more wise, nor more
temperate. And therefore it is well that we should warn those men
whose ignorant conversation is getting to have some notoriety and
weight, who wish either to be called Attic speakers, or who really
wish to speak in the Attic style, to fix their admiration on this man
above all others, than whom I do not think Athens itself more Attic.
For by so doing they may learn what Attic means, and may measure
eloquence by his power and not by their own weakness; for at present
every one praises just that which he thinks that he himself is able
to imitate. But still I think it not foreign to my present subject to
remind those who are endowed with but a weak judgment, what is the
peculiar merit of the Attic writers.

VIII. The prudence of the hearers has always been the regulator of
the eloquence of the orators. For all men who wish to be approved of,
regard the inclination of those men who are their hearers, and form
and adapt themselves entirely which of the Greek rhetoricians
ever drew any of his rules from Thucydides? Oh, but he is praised
universally. I admit that, but it is on the ground that he is a wise,
conscientious, dignified relater of facts, not that he was pleading
causes before tribunals, but that he was relating wars in a history.
Therefore, he was never accounted an orator; nor, indeed, should we
have ever heard of his name if he had not written a history, though he
was a man of eminently high character and of noble birth. But no one
ever imitates the dignity of his language or of his sentiments, but
when they have used some disjointed and unconnected expressions, which
they might have done without any teacher at all, then they think that
they are akin to Thucydides. I have met men too who were anxious to
resemble Xenophon, whose style is, indeed, sweeter than honey, but as
unlike as possible to the noisy style of the forum.

X Let us then return to the subject of laying a foundation for
the orator whom we desire to see, and of furnishing him with that
eloquence which Antonius had never found in any one. We are, O Brutus,
undertaking a great and arduous task, but I think n