[17]
I do not venture to suppose that
I have pointed out all the circumstances that may
give rise to arguments, but I think that I have
done so in the majority of cases.
This was a task which required all the more careful
handling because the declamations, which we used
to employ as foils wherewith to practise for the duels
of the forum, have long since departed from the
true form of pleading and, owing to the fact that
they are composed solely with the design of giving
pleasure, have become flaccid and nerveless: indeed,
declaimers are guilty of exactly the same offence as
slave-dealers who castrate boys in order to increase
tile attractions of their beauty.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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