Chapter XVII: Section XV

[a] The eloquence of Cicero, and the eminent orators of that age, was preferred by all men of sound judgement to the unnatural and affected style that prevailed under the emperors. Quintilian gives a decided opinion. Cicero, he says, was allowed to be the reigning orator of his time, and his name, with posterity, is not so much that of a man, as of eloquence itself. _Quare non immerito ab hominibus ætatis suæ, regnare in judiciis dictus est: apud posteros vero id consecutus, ut Cicero jam non hominis, sed eloquentiæ nomen habeatur._ Lib. x. cap. 1. Pliny the younger professed that Cicero was the orator with whom he aspired to enter into competition. Not content with the eloquence of his own times, he held it absurd not to follow the best examples of a former age. _Est enim mihi cum Cicerone æmulatio, nec sum contentus eloquentiâ sæculi nostri. Nam stultissimum credo, ad imitandum non optima quæque præponere._ Lib. i. epist. 5.

[b] Nicetes was a native of Smyrna, and a rhetorician in great celebrity. Seneca says (_Controversiarum_, lib. iv. cap. 25), that his scholars, content with hearing their master, had no ambition to be heard themselves. Pliny the younger, among the commendations which he bestows on a friend, mentions, as a praise-worthy part of his character, that he attended the lectures of Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos, of whom Pliny himself was at that time a constant follower. _Erat non studiorum tantum, verum etiam studiosorum amantissimus, ac prope quotidie ad audiendos, quos tunc ego frequentabam, Quintilianum et Niceten Sacerdotem, ventitabat._ Lib. vi. epist. 6.

[c] Mitylene was the chief city of the isle of Lesbos, in the Ægean Sea, near the coast of Asia. The place at this day is called _Metelin_, subject to the Turkish dominion. _Ephesus_ was a city of _Ionia_, in the Lesser Asia, now called _Ajaloue_ by the Turks, who are masters of the place.

[d] Domitius Afer and Julius Africanus have been already mentioned, section xiii. note [d]. Both are highly praised by Quintilian. For Asinius Pollio, see s. xii. note [e].