But then Thucydides will rise up; for some people admire his eloquence.  And they are quite right.  But he has no connexion with the orator, which is the person of whom we are in search.  For it is one thing to unfold the actions of men in a narration, and quite a different one to accuse and get rid of an accusation by arguing.  It is one thing to fix a hearer’s attention by a narration, and another to excite his feelings.  “But he uses beautiful language.”  Is his language finer than Plato’s?  Nevertheless it is necessary for the orator whom we are inquiring about, to explain forensic disputes by a style of speaking calculated at once to teach, to delight, and to excite.

VI.  Wherefore, if there is any one who professes that he intends to plead causes in the forum, following the style of Thucydides, no one will ever suspect him of being endowed with that kind of eloquence which is suited to affairs of state or to the bar.  But if he is content with praising Thucydides, then he may add my vote to his own.  Moreover, even Isocrates himself, whom that divine author, Plato, who was nearly his contemporary, has represented in the Phaedrus as being highly extolled by Socrates, and whom all learned men have called a consummate orator, I do not class among the number of those who are to be taken for models.  For he is not engaged in actual conflict; he is not armed for the fray; his speeches are made for display, like foils.  I will rather, (to compare small things with great,) bring on the stage a most noble pair of gladiators.  Aeschines shall come on like aeserninus, as Lucilius says—­

  “No ordinary man, but fearless all,
  And skill’d his arms to wield—­his equal match
  Pacideianus stands, than whom the world
  Since the first birth of man hath seen no greater.”

For I do not think that anything can be imagined more divine than that orator.  Now this labour of mine is found fault with by two kinds of critics.  One set says, “But the Greek is better.”  And I ask them whether the authors themselves could have clothed their speeches in better Latin?  The others say, “Why should I rather read the translation than the original?” Yet those same men read the Andria and the Synephebi; and are not less fond of Terence and Caecilius than of Menander.  They must then discard the Andromache, and the Antiope, and the Epigoni in Latin.  But yet, in fact, they read Ennius and Pacuvius and Attius more than Euripides and Sophocles.  What then is the meaning of this contempt of theirs for orations translated from the Greek, when they have no objection to translated verses?

VII.  However, let us now come to the task which we have undertaken, when we have just explained what the cause is which is before the court.