Letter 2003: Isaeus's reputation - and it was a great one - had preceded him to Rome, * but it was found to fall short of his merits.
Pliny the Younger→Nepos|c. 100 AD|Pliny the Younger
education books
To Nepos.
Isaeus's reputation - and it was a great one - had preceded him to Rome, * but it was found to fall short of his merits. He has consummate oratorical power, fluency and choice of expression, and though he always speaks extempore his speeches might have been carefully written out long beforehand. He speaks in Greek, and that the purest Attic; his prefatory remarks are polished, neat and agreeable, and occasionally stately and sparkling. He asks to be supplied with a number of subjects for discussion, and allows his audience to choose which they will have and often which side they would like him to take. Then he rises to his feet, wraps his gown round him, and begins. Without losing a moment he has everything at his fingers' ends, irrespective of the subject selected. Deep thoughts come crowding into his mind and words flow to his lips. And such words - exquisitely choice! Every now and then there come flashes which show how widely he has read and how much he has written. He opens his case to the point; he states his position clearly; his arguments are incisive; his conclusions are forcible; his word-painting is magnificent. In a word, he instructs, delights, and impresses his hearers, so that you can hardly say in which he most excels. He makes constant use of rhetorical arguments, ** his syllogisms are crisp and finished - though that is not an easy matter to attain even with a pen. He has a wonderful memory and can repeat, without missing a single word, even his extempore speeches. He has attained this facility by study and constant practice, for he does nothing else day or night: either as a listener or speaker he is for ever discussing. He has passed his sixtieth year and is still only a rhetorician, and there is no more honest and upright class of men living. For we who are always rubbing shoulders with others in the forum and in the lawsuits of everyday life, cannot help picking up a good deal of roguery, while in the imaginary cases of the lecture hall and the schoolroom it is like fighting with the button on the foil and quite harmless, and is every whit as enjoyable, especially for men of years. For what can be more enjoyable for men in their old age than that which gave them the keenest pleasure in their youth?
Consequently, I look upon Isaeus not only as a wonderfully learned man but as one who possesses a most enviable lot, and you must be made of flint and iron if you do not burn to make his acquaintance. So if there is nothing else to draw you here, if I myself am not a sufficient attraction, do come to hear Isaeus. Have you never read of the man who lived at Gades who was so fired by the name and glory of Titus Livius that he came from the remotest corner of the world to see him, and returned the moment he had set eyes on him? It would stamp a man as an illiterate boor and a lazy idler, it would be disgraceful almost for any one not to think the journey worth the trouble when the reward is a study which is more delightful, more elegant, and has more of the humanities than any other. You will say: "But I have here authors just as learned, whose works I can read." Granted, but you can always read an author, while you cannot always listen to him. Moreover, as the proverb goes, the spoken word is invariably much more impressive than the written one; for however lively what you read may be, it does not sink so deeply into the mind as what is pressed home by the accent, the expression, and the whole bearing and action of a speaker. This must be admitted unless we think the story of Aeschines untrue, when, after reading a speech of Demosthenes at Rhodes, he is said to have exclaimed to those who expressed their admiration of it: "Yes, but what would you have said if you had heard the beast himself?" And yet Aeschines himself, if we are to believe Demosthenes, had a very striking delivery! None the less he acknowledged that the author of the speech delivered it far better than he had done. All these things point to this, that you should hear Isaeus, if only to enable you to say that you have heard him. Farewell.
[Note: Juvenal mentions this rhetorician as a powerful speaker (iii. 74).
]
[Note: Enthymemata, which had a technical sense in logic (a syllogism drawn from probable premises, and later a syllogism with one premise suppressed, cf. Liddell and Scott, sub voce), is here used in the sense of "reflections, general considerations."]
L To Nepos.
Isaeus's reputation - and it was a great one - had preceded him to Rome, * but it was found to fall short of his merits. He has consummate oratorical power, fluency and choice of expression, and though he always speaks extempore his speeches might have been carefully written out long beforehand. He speaks in Greek, and that the purest Attic; his prefatory remarks are polished, neat and agreeable, and occasionally stately and sparkling. He asks to be supplied with a number of subjects for discussion, and allows his audience to choose which they will have and often which side they would like him to take. Then he rises to his feet, wraps his gown round him, and begins. Without losing a moment he has everything at his fingers' ends, irrespective of the subject selected. Deep thoughts come crowding into his mind and words flow to his lips. And such words - exquisitely choice! Every now and then there come flashes which show how widely he has read and how much he has written. He opens his case to the point; he states his position clearly; his arguments are incisive; his conclusions are forcible; his word-painting is magnificent. In a word, he instructs, delights, and impresses his hearers, so that you can hardly say wherein he most excels. He makes constant use of rhetorical arguments, ** his syllogisms are crisp and finished - though that is not an easy matter to attain even with a pen. He has a wonderful memory and can repeat, without missing a single word, even his extempore speeches. He has attained this facility by study and constant practice, for he does nothing else day or night: either as a listener or speaker he is for ever discussing. He has passed his sixtieth year and is still only a rhetorician, and there is no more honest and upright class of men living. For we who are always rubbing shoulders with others in the forum and in the lawsuits of everyday life, cannot help picking up a good deal of roguery, while in the imaginary cases of the lecture hall and the schoolroom it is like fighting with the button on the foil and quite harmless, and is every whit as enjoyable, especially for men of years. For what can be more enjoyable for men in their old age than that which gave them the keenest pleasure in their youth?
Consequently, I look upon Isaeus not only as a wonderfully learned man but as one who possesses a most enviable lot, and you must be made of flint and iron if you do not burn to make his acquaintance. So if there is nothing else to draw you here, if I myself am not a sufficient attraction, do come to hear Isaeus. Have you never read of the man who lived at Gades who was so fired by the name and glory of Titus Livius that he came from the remotest corner of the world to see him, and returned the moment he had set eyes on him? It would stamp a man as an illiterate boor and a lazy idler, it would be disgraceful almost for any one not to think the journey worth the trouble when the reward is a study which is more delightful, more elegant, and has more of the humanities than any other. You will say: "But I have here authors just as learned, whose works I can read." Granted, but you can always read an author, while you cannot always listen to him. Moreover, as the proverb goes, the spoken word is invariably much more impressive than the written one; for however lively what you read may be, it does not sink so deeply into the mind as what is pressed home by the accent, the expression, and the whole bearing and action of a speaker. This must be admitted unless we think the story of Aeschines untrue, when, after reading a speech of Demosthenes at Rhodes, he is said to have exclaimed to those who expressed their admiration of it: "Yes, but what would you have said if you had heard the beast himself?" And yet Aeschines himself, if we are to believe Demosthenes, had a very striking delivery! None the less he acknowledged that the author of the speech delivered it far better than he had done. All these things point to this, that you should hear Isaeus, if only to enable you to say that you have heard him. Farewell.
(*) Juvenal mentions this rhetorician as a powerful speaker (iii. 74).
(**) Enthymemata, which had a technical sense in logic (a syllogism drawn from probable premises, and later a syllogism with one premise suppressed, cf. Liddell and Scott, sub voce), is here used in the sense of "reflections, general considerations."
◆
To Nepos.
Isaeus's reputation - and it was a great one - had preceded him to Rome, * but it was found to fall short of his merits. He has consummate oratorical power, fluency and choice of expression, and though he always speaks extempore his speeches might have been carefully written out long beforehand. He speaks in Greek, and that the purest Attic; his prefatory remarks are polished, neat and agreeable, and occasionally stately and sparkling. He asks to be supplied with a number of subjects for discussion, and allows his audience to choose which they will have and often which side they would like him to take. Then he rises to his feet, wraps his gown round him, and begins. Without losing a moment he has everything at his fingers' ends, irrespective of the subject selected. Deep thoughts come crowding into his mind and words flow to his lips. And such words - exquisitely choice! Every now and then there come flashes which show how widely he has read and how much he has written. He opens his case to the point; he states his position clearly; his arguments are incisive; his conclusions are forcible; his word-painting is magnificent. In a word, he instructs, delights, and impresses his hearers, so that you can hardly say in which he most excels. He makes constant use of rhetorical arguments, ** his syllogisms are crisp and finished - though that is not an easy matter to attain even with a pen. He has a wonderful memory and can repeat, without missing a single word, even his extempore speeches. He has attained this facility by study and constant practice, for he does nothing else day or night: either as a listener or speaker he is for ever discussing. He has passed his sixtieth year and is still only a rhetorician, and there is no more honest and upright class of men living. For we who are always rubbing shoulders with others in the forum and in the lawsuits of everyday life, cannot help picking up a good deal of roguery, while in the imaginary cases of the lecture hall and the schoolroom it is like fighting with the button on the foil and quite harmless, and is every whit as enjoyable, especially for men of years. For what can be more enjoyable for men in their old age than that which gave them the keenest pleasure in their youth?
Consequently, I look upon Isaeus not only as a wonderfully learned man but as one who possesses a most enviable lot, and you must be made of flint and iron if you do not burn to make his acquaintance. So if there is nothing else to draw you here, if I myself am not a sufficient attraction, do come to hear Isaeus. Have you never read of the man who lived at Gades who was so fired by the name and glory of Titus Livius that he came from the remotest corner of the world to see him, and returned the moment he had set eyes on him? It would stamp a man as an illiterate boor and a lazy idler, it would be disgraceful almost for any one not to think the journey worth the trouble when the reward is a study which is more delightful, more elegant, and has more of the humanities than any other. You will say: "But I have here authors just as learned, whose works I can read." Granted, but you can always read an author, while you cannot always listen to him. Moreover, as the proverb goes, the spoken word is invariably much more impressive than the written one; for however lively what you read may be, it does not sink so deeply into the mind as what is pressed home by the accent, the expression, and the whole bearing and action of a speaker. This must be admitted unless we think the story of Aeschines untrue, when, after reading a speech of Demosthenes at Rhodes, he is said to have exclaimed to those who expressed their admiration of it: "Yes, but what would you have said if you had heard the beast himself?" And yet Aeschines himself, if we are to believe Demosthenes, had a very striking delivery! None the less he acknowledged that the author of the speech delivered it far better than he had done. All these things point to this, that you should hear Isaeus, if only to enable you to say that you have heard him. Farewell.
[Note: Juvenal mentions this rhetorician as a powerful speaker (iii. 74).
]
[Note: Enthymemata, which had a technical sense in logic (a syllogism drawn from probable premises, and later a syllogism with one premise suppressed, cf. Liddell and Scott, sub voce), is here used in the sense of "reflections, general considerations."]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.