Now Plato, that greatest of all authors and teachers, not only of understanding, but also of speaking, calls those forms of things ideas; and he affirms that they are not created, but that they exist from everlasting, and are kept in their places by reason and intelligence:  that all other things have their rising and setting, their ebb and flow, and cannot continue long in the same condition.  Whatever there is, therefore, which can become a subject of discussion as to its principle and method, is to be reduced to the ultimate form and species of its class.

And I see that this first beginning of mine is derived not from the discussions of orators, but from the very heart of philosophy, and that it is old-fashioned and somewhat obscure, and likely to incur some blame, or at all events to provoke some surprise.  For men will either wonder what all this has to do with that which is the subject of our inquiry, and they will be satisfied with understanding the nature of the facts, so that it may not seem to be without reason that we have traced their origin so far back; or else they will blame us for hunting out for unaccustomed paths, and abandoning those in ordinary use.

But I am aware that I often appear to say things which are novel, when I am in reality saying what is very old, only not generally known.  And I confess that I have been made an orator, (if indeed I am one at all,) or such as I am, not by the workshops of the rhetoricians, but by the walks of the Academy.  For that is the school of manifold and various discourses, in which first of all there are imprinted the footsteps of Plato.  But the orator is to a great extent trained and assisted by his discussions and those of other philosophers.  For all that copiousness, and forest, as it were, of eloquence, is derived from those men, and yet is not sufficient for forensic business; which, as these men themselves used to say, they left to more rustic muses.  Accordingly this forensic eloquence, being despised and repudiated by philosophy, has lost many great and substantial helps; but still, as it is embellished with flowery language and well-turned periods, it has had some popularity among the people, and has had no reason to fear the judgment or prejudice of a few.  And so popular eloquence has been lost to learned men, and elegant learning to eloquent ones.

IV.  Let this then be laid down among the first principles, (and it will be better understood presently,)—­that the eloquent man whom we are looking for cannot be rendered such without philosophy.  Not indeed that there is everything necessary in philosophy, but that it is of assistance to an orator as the wrestling-school is to an actor; for small things are often compared with great ones.  For no one can express wide views, or speak fluently on many and various subjects, without philosophy.  Since also, in the Phaedrus of Plato, Socrates says that this is what Pericles was superior to all other orators in, that he had been a pupil of Anaxagoras the natural philosopher.  And it was owing to him, in his opinion, (though he had learnt also many other splendid and admirable accomplishments,) that he was so copious and imaginative, and so thoroughly aware—­which is the main thing in eloquence—­by what kinds of speeches the different parts of men’s minds are moved.