"Obesse non potest, quin ejusdem hominis sit, probos improbare, qui improbos probet."
How much better would it have been if he had said,
"Quin ejusdem hominis sit, qui improbos probet, probos improbare!"
No one ever had any objection to speaking in this manner; and no one was ever able to do so who did not do it. But those who have spoken in a different manner have not been able to arrive at this excellence. And so on a sudden they have set up for orators of the Attic school. As if Demosthenes was a man of Tralles; but even his thunderbolts would not have shone so if they had not been pointed by rhythm.
LXXI. But if there be any one who prefers a loose style of oratory, let him cultivate it; keeping in view this principle,—if any one were to take to pieces the shield of Phidias, he would destroy the beauty of the collective arrangement, not the exquisite workmanship of each fragment: and as in Thucydides I only miss the roundness of his periods; all the graces of style are there. But these men, when they compose a loose oration, in which there is no matter, and no expression which is not a low one, appear to me to be taking to pieces, not a shield, but, as the proverb says, (which, though but a low one, is still very apt,) only a broom. And in order that there may be no mistake as to their contempt of this style which I am praising, let them write something either in the style of Isocrates, or in that which Aeschines or Demosthenes employs, and then I will believe that they have not shrunk from this style out of despair of being able to arrive at it, but that they have avoided it deliberately on account of their bad opinion of it: or else I will find a man myself who may be willing to be bound by this condition,—either to say or write, in whichever language you please, in the style which those men prefer. For it is easier to disunite what is connected than to connect what is disjointedly strung together.
However, the fact is, (to be brief in explaining my real opinion,) to speak in a well-arranged and suitable manner without good ideas is to act like a madman. But to speak in a sententious manner, without any order or method in one's language, is to behave like a child: but still it is childishness of that sort, that those who employ it cannot be considered stupid men, and indeed may often be accounted wise men. And if a man is contented with that sort of character, why let him speak in that way. But the eloquent man, who, if his subject will allow it, ought to excite not only approbation, but admiration and loud applause, ought to excel in everything to such a degree, that he should think it discreditable that anything should be beheld or listened to more gladly than his speech.
You have here, O Brutus, my opinion respecting an orator. If you approve of it, follow it; or else adhere to your own, if you have formed any settled opinion on the subject. And I shall not be offended with you, nor will I affirm that this opinion of mine which I have asserted so positively in this book is more correct than yours; for it is possible not only that my opinion should be different from yours, but even that my own may be different at different times. And not only in this matter, which has reference to gaining the assent of the common people and to the pleasure of the ears, which are two of the most unimportant points as far as judgment is concerned; but even in the most important affairs, I have never found anything firmer to take hold of, or to guide my judgment by, than the extremity of probability as it appeared to me, when actual truth was hidden or obscure.
But I wish that you, if you do not approve entirely of the things which I have urged in this treatise, would believe either that I proposed to myself a work of too great difficulty for me to accomplish properly, or else that, while wishing to comply with your request, I undertook the impudent task of writing this, from being ashamed to refuse you.