target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_d38866e0-fdd7-5183-81cf-b17171f9f44e">[88] An Ionian city of Asia, distant seventy miles from Ephesus.
[89] An interior town of Cilicia, in Asia Minor.
[90] The home of this warlike people appears to have been Jutland.
[91] The tyrant king of Syracuse, successor to Gelon.
[92] A country of Asia Minor occupying a part of the Black Sea coast.
[93] From the "Natural History." Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley.
[94] Apelles lived in the time of Philip and Alexander the Great. Cos is an island in the Ægean Sea.
[95] A painter of the Sicyonian school who flourished in the third century b.c.
[96] Protogenes, a native of Caria, in Asia Minor, was celebrated as a painter at Rhodes in the second half of the fourth century b.c.
[97] Praxiteles was born in Athena about the end of the fifth century and continued active as an artist until the time at Alexander the Great. Nearly sixty of his works are mentioned in ancient writings, but only two have been identified in modern times.
[98] Phidias was born in Athens about 500 b.c. and died about 430.
QUINTILIAN
Born in Spain about 35 a.d.; died about 95; celebrated as rhetorian; educated in Rome, where he taught oratory for twenty years; patronized by the emperors Vespasian and Domitian; his most celebrated work the "Institutio Oratoria."[99]
THE ORATOR MUST BE A GOOD MAN[100]
Let the orator, then, whom I propose to form, be such a one as is characterized by the definition of Marcus Cato, a good man skilled in speaking.
But the requisite which Cato has placed first in this definition, that an orator should be a good man, is naturally of more estimation and importance than the other. It is of importance that an orator should be good, because, should the power of speaking be a support to evil, nothing would be more pernicious than eloquence alike to public concerns and private, and I myself, who, as far as is in my power, strive to contribute something to the faculty of the orator, should deserve very ill of the world, since I should furnish arms, not for soldiers, but for robbers. May I not draw an argument from the condition of mankind? Nature herself, in bestowing on man that which she seems to have granted him preeminently, and by which she appears to have distinguished us from all other animals, would have acted, not as a parent, but as a stepmother, if she had designed the faculty of speech to be the promoter of crime, the oppressor of innocence, and the enemy of truth; for it would have been better for us to have been born dumb, and to have been left destitute of reasoning powers, than to have received endowments from providence only to turn them to the destruction of one another.
My judgment carries me still further; for I not only say that he who would answer my idea of an orator must be a good man, but that no man, unless he be good, can ever be an orator. To an orator discernment and prudence are necessary; but we can certainly not allow discernment to those, who when the ways of virtue and vice are set before them, prefer to follow that of vice; nor can we allow them prudence, since they subject themselves, by the unforeseen consequences of their actions, often to the heaviest penalty of the law, and always to that of an evil conscience. But if it be not only truly said by the wise, but always justly believed by the vulgar, that no man is vicious who is not also foolish, a fool, assuredly, will never become an orator.
It is to be further considered that the mind can not be in a condition for pursuing the most noble of studies, unless it be entirely free from vice; not only because there can be no communion of good and evil in the same breast, and to meditate at once on the best things and the worst is no more in the power of the same mind than it is possible for the same man to be at once virtuous and vicious; but also because a mind intent on so arduous a study should be exempt from all other cares, even such as are unconnected with vice; for then, and then only, when it is free and master of itself, and when no other object harasses and distracts its attention, will it be able to keep in view the end to which it is devoted. But if an inordinate attention to an estate, a too anxious pursuit of wealth, indulgence in the pleasures of the chase, and the devotion of our days to public spectacles, rob our studies of much of our time (for whatever time is given to one thing is lost to another), what effect must we suppose that ambition, avarice, and envy will produce, whose excitements are so violent as even to disturb our sleep and our dreams? Nothing indeed is so preoccupied, so unsettled, so torn and lacerated with such numerous and various passions, as a bad mind; for when it intends evil, it is agitated with hope, care, and anxiety, and when it has attained the object of its wickedness, it is tormented with uneasiness, and the dread of every kind of punishment.
No man, certainly, will doubt, that it is the object of all oratory, that what is stated to the judge may appear to him to be true and just; and which of the two, let me ask, will produce such a conviction with the greater ease, the good man or the bad? A good man, doubtless, will speak of what is true and honest with greater frequency; but even if, from being influenced by some call of duty, he endeavors to support what is fallacious (a case which, as I shall show, may sometimes occur), he must still be heard with greater credit than a bad man. But with bad men, on the other hand, dissimulation sometimes fails, as well through their contempt for the opinion of mankind, as through their ignorance of what is right; hence they assert without modesty, and maintain their assertions without shame; and, in attempting what evidently can not be accomplished, there appears in them a repulsive obstinacy and useless perseverance; for bad men, as well in their pleadings as in their lives, entertain dishonest expectations; and it often happens, that even when they speak the truth, belief is not accorded them, and the employment of advocates of such a character is regarded as a proof of the badness of a cause.
I must, however, notice those objections to my opinion, which appear to be clamored forth, as it were, by the general consent of the multitude. Was not then Demosthenes, they ask, a great orator? yet we have heard that he was not a good man. Was not Cicero a great orator? yet many have thrown censure upon his character. To such questions how shall I answer? Great displeasure is likely to be shown at any reply whatever; and the ears of my audience require first to be propitiated. The character of Demosthenes, let me say, does not appear to me deserving of such severe reprehension, that I should believe all the calumnies that are heaped upon him by his enemies, especially when I read his excellent plans for the benefit of his country and the honorable termination of his life. Nor do I see that the feeling of an upright citizen was, in any respect,
