[18]
Some even expend
an infinity of toil to acquire this vice, which, by the
way, is nothing new: for I learn from the pages of
Livy1 that there was one, a teacher, who instructed
his pupils to make all they said obscure, using the
Greek word σκότισον (“darken it.”) It was this
same habit that gave rise to the famous words of
praise, “So much the better: even I could not
understand you.”
1 Perhaps in his letter to his son, for which see II. v. 20.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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