[61]
But he whose eloquence is like to some great torrent
that rolls down rocks and “disdains a bridge”1 and
carves out its own banks for itself, will sweep the
judge from his feet, struggle as he may, and force
him to go whither he bears him. This is the orator
that will call the dead to life (as, for example, Cicero
calls upon Appius Caecus2); it is in his pages
that his native land itself will cry aloud and at
times address the orator himself, as it addresses
Cicero in the speech delivered against Catiline in
the senate.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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