. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neither a virgin that lisps may be chosen as a Vestal nor one that speaks indistinctly1 . . . . Words descriptive of stammerers to be variously employed . . . . the utterance of stammerers is generally described as follows: an impeded utterance, a tied utterance, a laboured, a defective, an imperfect, a discordant utterance. The contraries of these have, I doubt not, already rewarded your search: a free utterance, a distinct, an easy, a perfect, a smooth utterance. Your utterance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A survey of all the terms applied to indistinct speakers . . . .
The lovers of melodious utterance are said to have listened first to the birds in a shady covert. Next shepherds delighted themselves and their flocks with the newly-invented pipes. Pipes seemed far more melodious than birds . . . . they take delight by way2 of eloquence in the soft notes of mutterers. Anon they nevertheless put up with Ennius and Accius and Lucretius, resonant now with a fuller bass. But when the trumpet of Cato and Sallust and Tullius is heard upon the air, they are excited and affrighted and bethink them of flight, vainly, for even there in the teachings of Philosophy, where they think they have a safe refuge, the resonant periods of Plato will have to be heard.
This little story3 applies to those who having no aptitude for it, shun eloquence in despair. But to you, O Caesar, if ever to man, has been given by the Gods a sublime and lofty and splendid genius; for your earliest thoughts and the infancy of your studies came under my ken. From the very first there was no hiding your nobility of mind and the dignity of your thoughts: they wanted then but one thing, the illumination of words: that too, we were providing by a varied course of study.
At this point, in the manner of the young and from a dislike of drudgery, you seem to have deserted the pursuit of eloquence, and to have turned aside after philosophy,4 in which there is no exordium to be carefully elaborated, no marshalling of facts concisely and clearly and skilfully, no dividing of a subject into heads, no arguments to be hunted for, no amplification . . . . . . . . to complete what is imperfect, to fill up gaps with padding . . . . this age requires a friend for counsel rather than for help . . . . to complete what is imperfect, to fill up a hiatus, to make rough places smooth . . . .
Were you not eager for all the resources of orators, their adroitness in refuting, their talent for amplifying, their charm in evasion, and I know not what kind of downright power and potency, that lies in speaking, of moving and delighting, of deterring and provoking, of exhorting, of conciliating, of inflaming, of calming the minds of hearers or alluring them?
Then if on occasion hindered by perpetual business you had no time to compose a speech, did you not fortify yourself with certain hurried yet valuable recreations in the way of study, by collecting synonyms, at times by searching out remarkable words? so as to turn the periods of old writers and their clauses by the system of synonyms5; to render refined what was vulgar, and fresh what was soiled, fit in some image, throw in a figure, embellish with a good old word, add a patina of age. If you despise all this only because you have learnt it, you will also despise philosophy in the learning.
But these are not things which you could despise: dislike them of course you might. As in old days a morose Crassus6 hated laughter, as in our time here a Crassus7 hid from the daylight, and again in our time a man of consular rank had a horror of plains, and traversed the Pomptine plain and many other places with his litter closed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 But often even the wisest of men does not know how to speak in a style obviously new. But circumstances have so . . . . . . . . a well there would sound less vulgar . . . . thoughts unexpected, to others indeed new and previously unused. So much greater peril is there in thoughts if they are not qualified with figures of speech sparingly used. I can perhaps express my meaning more clearly in Greek words: τὰ καινὰ καὶ παράδοξα τῶν ἐνθυμημάτων9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the book which you sent a scarce one. Know then that in this one point your eloquence limps, splendid as it is.
I warn you, therefore, again and again, my Marcus, and beseech you to remember, as often as you conceive in your mind a startling thought, think over it with yourself and turn and try it with various figures of speech and dress it out in splendid words. For there is a danger that what is new to the hearers and unexpected may seem ridiculous unless it be embellished and made figurative.
All else in eloquence are for you smoothed and made clear. You know how to search out words, you know how to arrange them correctly when found, you know how to invest them with the genuine patina of antiquity, and you have an abundance of the weightiest and noblest thoughts . . . . is the first essential; as soon as they have been exposed they are easily known and disregarded. In a word, you could see that the rhetorician is despised and of no account, while the dialecticians are courted and treated with every respect, because in their ratiocinations there is always something obscure and intricate, and hence it results that the disciple always hangs upon his master and is his slave, held fast bound with a kind of everlasting fetter.
Someone will say You then, of course, beyond all others use choice and striking words. Nay, I use common and old ones. What then? If I knew not that much, I should use words still worse.
On Eloquence 4
? 162 A.D.
Fronto to Antoninus Augustus.