[5]
The old orators indeed used to conceal their eloquence, a method which is recommended by Marcus
Antonius, as a means of securing that the speaker's
words should carry conviction and of masking the
advocate's real designs. But the truth is that the
eloquence of those days was capable of concealment,
for it had not yet attained that splendour of diction
which makes it impossible to hide its light under a
bushel. Therefore artifice and stratagem should be
masked, since detection in such cases spells failure.
Thus far, and thus only, may eloquence hope to enjoy
the advantages of secrecy.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.