[83]
Why
should I dwell on the elegance of the rest of the
Socratics? or on Aristotle,1 with regard to whom I
hesitate whether to praise him more for his knowledge, for the multitude of his writings, the sweetness of his style, the penetration revealed by his
discoveries or the variety of the tasks which he
[p. 49]
essayed? In Theophrastus2 we find such a superhuman brilliance of style that his name is said to be
derived therefrom.
1 “Sweet” is the last epithet to be applied to the surviving works of Aristotle. But Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Cicero praise him no less warmly, referring, no doubt, to works that are lost.
2 Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor as head of his school (322–287). Diogenes Laertius (v. 38) says that his real name was Tyrtamus, but that Aristotle called him Theophrastus because of the “divine qualities of his style” (φράσις).
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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