De antiquis oratoribus

It would be right, most excellent Ammaeus, to feel great gratitude toward our own age, both on account of certain other pursuits that are now practised more nobly than before, and not least because the care bestowed upon civic oratory has made no small advance toward the better. For in the times before us the ancient and philosophic rhetoric was being trampled in the mire and, enduring grievous outrages, was being brought to ruin. Beginning from the death of Alexander the Macedonian, she began to lose her breath and to wither away little by little, and in our own generation she came within a little of being utterly extinguished. But another rhetoric, coming forward to take the place of that one—intolerable in her theatrical shamelessness, ill-bred, and sharing in neither philosophy nor any other liberal training—escaped notice and, beguiling the ignorance of the crowds, not only passed her life in greater wealth, luxury, and outward show than the other, but also attached to herself the honours and the leadership of the cities, which the philosophic rhetoric ought to have held; and she was a thoroughly vulgar and troublesome creature, and in the end she made Greece resemble the households of profligate and ill-starred men. For just as in such households the free-born and chaste wedded wife sits with no authority over what is her own, while some senseless courtesan, present for the ruin of the estate, claims to rule over the whole property, treating the other as so much refuse and frightening her off; in the same way, in every city—and in none less than in the well-educated (this being the worst of all the evils)—the Attic Muse, ancient and native to the soil, had taken on a dishonoured guise, fallen from her own good things, while the other, arrived but yesterday and the day before from some pits of Asia—a Mysian or Phrygian or Carian creature of evil—claimed the right to administer the Greek cities, having driven the other from the public business: the ignorant one driving out the philosophic, the raving one the chaste.

But, in truth, time is not only "the best saviour of just men," as Pindar says, but, by Zeus, of arts and pursuits and every other worthy thing as well. And our own age has shown this—whether some god began the change, or a natural cycle was bringing back the ancient order, or a human impulse was leading many to like aims—and it has granted to the ancient and chaste rhetoric to recover the just honour which she had rightly held before, and to the new and senseless one to cease reaping a glory that did not belong to her and luxuriating in goods that were another's. And perhaps it is not for this one thing alone that the present age and the men who join in the study of philosophy deserve praise—namely, that they have begun to make the better things more honoured than the worse (though "the beginning," it is said and truly, "is half of the whole")—but also because it has brought about a swift change and a great advance in these matters. For, except for a few Asiatic cities, in which, through ignorance, the learning of fine things is slow, the rest have ceased to take delight in vulgar, frigid, and senseless speeches; and of those who formerly prided themselves greatly upon such speeches, some are now ashamed and little by little deserting to the other side—unless certain of them are altogether incurable—while those who have lately taken up the study lead such speeches into contempt and make a mockery of the zeal expended upon them.

The cause, I think, and the beginning of so great a change has been Rome, who rules over all, compelling whole cities to look toward herself; and of Rome herself, those who hold power according to virtue and administer the public affairs on the principle of what is best, men thoroughly well educated and noble in their judgements. Adorned by these, the prudent part of the city has advanced still further, and the senseless part has been compelled to have sense. And so it comes about that many histories worthy of serious attention are written by the men of our day, many graceful civic speeches are brought forth, and philosophic compositions by no means—by Zeus—to be despised, and many other fine treatises, very carefully worked out both by Romans and by Greeks, have appeared and, in all likelihood, will continue to appear. And I should not be surprised, so great a change having come about in this short time, if that zeal for senseless speeches should not pass on beyond a single generation more. For what has been brought together out of everything into the smallest compass may easily, from being small, come to be no longer at all.

But, in truth, the thanks to be rendered to the time that changes affairs, and the praise of those who choose the best, and the conjecturing of things to come from things that have happened, and all matters like these, which even a chance person could speak of—these I shall let pass. Rather I shall try to speak of those things from which the better things might still take greater strength, having taken up a subject for my discourse that is common, humane, and able to confer the greatest benefit. It is this: who are the most noteworthy of the ancient orators and historians, and what choices each of them made in their life and in their speeches, and what one ought to take from each or guard against—fine and necessary subjects of study for those who practise civic philosophy, and assuredly not, by Zeus, common ones, nor worn smooth by my predecessors. I, at any rate, know of no such treatise that I have come upon, though I have made much inquiry after them. I do not, however, affirm this as though I knew it for certain; for perhaps there may be some such writings that have escaped my notice; and to make oneself the measure of the whole record of things, and to declare that something which might possibly have come to be has not come to be, is altogether presumptuous and not far from madness. About these matters, then, I have nothing, as I said, to affirm with confidence. But of the orators and historians of whom my discourse treats, since they are very many and good, I see that to write about all of them requires a long discourse, and so I shall pass them by, and, taking up the most graceful of them, I shall speak of each in order of age—now of the orators, and, if there is room, of the historians too. Those orators who will be taken up will be three of the elder ones, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, and three of those who flourished after these, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Aeschines, whom I judge to be the ablest of all the rest. The treatise will be divided into two compositions, and it will take its beginning from this present one, written about the elder orators. These things having been said by way of preface, it is time to return to the matters before us.