[14]
As for declamations
of the kind delivered in the schools of the rhetoricians, so long as they are in keeping with actual
life and resemble speeches, they are most profitable
to the student, not merely while he1 is still immature,
for the reason that they simultaneously exercise the
powers both of invention and arrangement, but even
when he has finished his education and acquired a
reputation in the courts. For they provide a richer
diet from which eloquence derives nourishment and
brilliance of complexion, and at the same time afford
a refreshing variety after the continuous fatigues
of forensic disputes.
1 profectus, lit. “progress,” abstract for concrete.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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