[25]
What is the
reason, then, why these critics regard that style
which flows in a slender trickle and babbles among
the pebbles as having the true Attic flavour and
the true scent of Attic thyme? I really think that,
if they were to discover a soil of exceptional richness
and a crop of unusual abundance within the boundaries
of Attica, they would deny it to be Attic, on the
ground that it has produced more seed than it
received: for you will remember the mocking comments passed by Menander1 on the exact fidelity
with which the soil of Attica repays its deposits.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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