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[14] And if this excellence was to be found in no orator up to his own day, and not even in himself or Lucius Crassus, we may regard it as certain that the reason why they and their predecessors lacked this gift was its extreme difficulty of acquisition. Again, Cicero1 holds that, while invention and arrangement are within the reach of any man of good sense, eloquence belongs to the orator alone, and consequently it was on the rules for the cultivation of eloquence that he expended the greatest care.

1 Cic. Or. xiv. 44;

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load focus Introduction (Harold Edgeworth Butler, 1922)
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