Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/566

 palace, by which conduct they themselves have gained riches and high rank.

3.  This profession of forensic oratory the wisdom of Plato defines to be "the shadow of a fraction of the art of government," or a fourth part of the art of flattery. But Epicurus calls it κακοτεχνία reckoning it among the wicked arts. Tisias, who has Gorgias of Leontinum on his side, calls the orator an artist of persuasion.

4. And while such has been the opinion formed of this art by the ancients, the craft of some of the Eastern people has put it forward so as to make it an object of hatred to good men, on which account an orator it is sometimes restricted to a limited time for speaking. Therefore, after saying a few words about its unworthy character, as I found by experience while in those countries, I will return to my original subject.

5.  The tribunals, in former times, when good taste prevailed, were greatly adorned by our advocates, when orators of spirited eloquence—laborious and accomplished scholars—shone pre-eminent in genius, honesty, fluency, and every kind of embellishment of language. As Demosthenes, who, as we learn from the Athenian records, whenever he was going to speak, drew together a vast concourse of people from the whole of Greece, who assembled for the sake of hearing him; and Callistratus, who, when summing up his noble pleading on the subject of Oropus in Euboea, produced such an impression that that same Demosthenes quitted the academy, at the time when Plato was at its head, to become his follower. And Hyperides, and Aeschines, and Andocides, and Dinarchus, and Antiphon the Rhamnusian, who is the first man spoken of in ancient history as having received a fee for pleading a cause.

6.  And similarly among the Romans, the Rutilii, and Galbae, and Scauri, men of eminent reputation for purity of life and manners, and for frugality; and in the succeeding generations, many men of censorian and consular rank, and even many who had celebrated triumphs, such as