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[37]
Again, the same remark
will seem freedom of speech in one's mouth, madness
in another's, and arrogance in a third. We laugh at
the words used by Thersites1 to Agamemnon; but
put them in the mouth of Diomede or some other
of his peers, and they will seem the expression of a
great spirit. “Shall I regard you as consul,” said
Lucius Crassus2 to Phililppus, “when you refuse to
[p. 177]
regard me as a senator?” That was honourable
freedom of speech, and yet we should not tolerate
such words from everybody's lips.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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