s a string of epithets which it would be hopeless to
attempt to translate: "Nam est et candida, et fusca, et plena, et
exilis, et levis, et aspera, et contracta, et fusa, et dura, et
flexibilis, et clara, et obtusa; spiritus etiam longior,
breviorque."[272] And the remarkable thing was, that every Roman who
listened would understand what the orator intended, and would know too,
and would tell him of it, if by error he had fallen into some cadence
which was not exactly right. To the modes of raising the voice, which
are usually divided into three--the high or treble, the low or bass, and
that which is between the two, the contralto and tenor--many others are
added. There are the eager and the soft, the higher and the lower notes,
the quicker and the slower. It seems little to us, who know that we can
speak or whisper, hammer our words together, or drawl them out. But then
every listener was critically alive to the fact whether the speaker
before him did or did not perform his task as it should be done. No
wonder that Cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. Then the
strength of body had to be matured, lest the voice should fall to "a
sick, womanly weakness, like that of an eunuch." This must be provided
by exercise, by anointing, by continence, by the easy digestion of the
food--which means moderation; and the jaws must be free, so that the
words must not strike each other. And as to the action of the orator,
Cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly as do the
words themselves. In all this we find that Quintilian only follows his
master too closely. The hands, the shoulders, the sides, the stamping of
the foot, the single step or many steps--every motion of the body,
agreeing with the words from his mouth, are all described.[273] He
attributes this to Antony--but only because, as he thinks of it, some
movement of Antony's has recurred to his memory.

To make the men who heard him believe in him was the one gift which
Cicero valued; not to make them know him to be true, but to believe him
to be so. This it was, in Cicero's time, to be the optimus orator.

Since Cicero's time there has been some progress in the general conduct
of men. They are less greedy, less cruel, less selfish--greedy, cruel,
and selfish though they still are. The progress which the best among us
have made Cicero in fact achieved; but he had not acquired that
theoretic aversion to a lie which is the first feeling in the bosom of