[22]
But the most ostentatious kind of boasting takes
the form of actual self-derision. Let us therefore
leave it to others to praise us. For it beseems us,
as Demosthenes says, to blush even when we are
praised by others. I do not mean to deny that
there are occasions when an orator may speak of
his own achievements, as Demosthenes himself does
in his defence of Ctesiphon.1 But on that occasion
he qualified his statements in such a way as to show
that he was compelled by necessity to do so, and to
throw the odium attaching to such a proceeding on
the man who had forced him to it.
1 De Cor. 128.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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