[18]
But he that has enough of the
divine spark to conceive the ideal eloquence, he who,
as the great tragic poet1 says, regards “oratory” as
“the queen of all the world” and seeks not the transitory gains of advocacy, but those stable and lasting
rewards which his own soul and knowledge and
[p. 201]
contemplation can give, he will easily persuade himself to spend his time not, like so many, in the theatre
or in the Campus Martius, in dicing or in idle talk,
to say naught of the hours that are wasted in sleep
or long drawn banqueting, but in listening rather to
the geometrician and the teacher of music. For by
this he will win a richer harvest of delight than can
ever be gathered from the pleasures of the ignorant,
since among the many gifts of providence to man
not the least is this that the highest pleasure is the
child of virtue.
1 Pacuvius (Ribbeck, 177).
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