[50]
And as
for perorations, what can ever be equal to the prayers
which Priam addresses to Achilles1 when he comes
to beg for the body of his son? Again, does he not
transcend the limits of human genius in his choice
of words, his reflexions, figures, and the arrangement
of his whole work, with the result that it requires a
powerful mind, I will not say to imitate, for that is
impossible, but even to appreciate his excellences?
1 Il. xxiv. 486 sqq.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.