. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What you enjoin may perhaps be right, but it is too late: nor indeed does age also permit all that reason demands . . . . Would you make a swan in its dying song rival the cawing of crows? . . . . though it is out of keeping with my genius, would you advise me to strive against nature and swim, as they say, against the stream? What, if one called on Phidias to produce sportive works or Canachus images of Gods, or Calamis delicate statuary or Polycletus rough handiwork? What if one bade Parrhasius paint rainbow hues or Apelles monochromes, or Nealces grand canvasses or Protogenes miniature1 ones, or Nicias sombre pictures or Dionysius brilliant ones, or Euphranor subjects all licence or Pausias all austerity?
Among poets, who does not know how Lucilius is graceful,2 Albucius dry, Lucretius sublime, Pacuvius mediocre, Accius unequal, Ennius many-sided? History, too, has been written by Sallust symmetrically by Pictor without method, by Claudius pleasantly by Antias without charm, by Sisenna3 at length, by Cato with many words abreast by Caelius with words in single harness.4 In harangue, again, Cato is savage, Gracchus violent, Tully copious, while at the bar Cato rages, Cicero triumphs, Gracchus riots, Calvus quarrels.
But perhaps you would make light of these Instances. What? have not philosophers themselves used different styles in their speaking? No one could be fuller in exposition than Zeno, more captious in argument than Socrates, more ready than Diogenes at denunciation; Heraclitus was obscure enough to mystify everything, Pythagoras wonderfully prone to give everything religious sanction with secret symbols, Clitomachus agnostic enough to call everything in question. What, pray, would your wisest of men themselves do, if called away from their own individual habits and principles—Socrates from arguing, Zeno from disputing, Diogenes from finding fault, Pythagoras from sanctioning anything, Heraclitus from wrapping anything in mystery, Clitomachus from calling anything in question?
But that we may not dwell on this first part longer than is compatible with the compass of a letter, it is time to consider first what is your view about words. Tell me then, pray, whether in your opinion the choicest words must be disdained and rejected, even if they come to me of their own accord, without any toil and pursuit of mine? or, while forbidding the searching out of choice words with toil and eagerness, do you at the same time bid me receive them like Menelaus at the banquet,5 if only they come of their own accord, unbidden by me and uninvited? For to forbid that indeed is downright harsh and barbarous, It is as though from a host who welcomes you with Falernian wine, which being produced on his own estate is abundant at home, you should call for Cretan or Saguntine, to be got—bad cess to it!—from elsewhere and paid for. What . . . . Epictetus unconcerned . . . . Socrates . . . . Xenophon . . . . Antisthenes . . . . Aeschines . . . . Plato . . . .6 Would they then not indicate this, if . . . .7 What in our own recollection of Euphrates,8 Dio,9 Timocrates, Athenodotus?10 What of their master Musonius?11 Were they not gifted with a supreme command of words, and famed as much for their eloquence as for their wisdom?12
Or do you think that Epictetus did not use words of set purpose? . . . .13 would have preferred even a mantle foul with dirt to one that was white and spotlessly clean. Unless you think perchance that Epictetus became lame too of set purpose and of set purpose was born a slave. What then is it? So easily he . . . . never would have donned voluntary rags of words. Even a slave by accident he was of set purpose born a wise man. But so eloquence was divorced from soundness of feet14 . . . .
On Eloquence 1
? 162 A.D.
Fronto to Antoninus Augustus.