XII.  From this form is derived fluency of words; from it also the combination and rhythm of sentences derives a freer licence.  For great indulgence is shown to neatly turned sentences; and rhythmical, steady, compact periods are always admissible.  And pains are taken purposely, not disguisedly, but openly and avowedly, to make one word answer to another, as if they had been measured together and were equal to each other.  So that words opposed to one another may be frequently contrasted, and contrary words compared together, and that sentences may be terminated in the same manner, and may give the same sound at their conclusion; which, when we are dealing with actual causes, we do much more seldom, and certainly with more disguise.  But, in his Panathenaic oration, Isocrates avows that he diligently kept that object in view; for he composed it not for a contest in a court of justice, but to delight the ears of his hearers.

They say that Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, and Gorgias of Leontini, were the first men who taught this science; after him Theodorus of Byzantium, and many others whom Socrates in the Phaedrus calls [Greek:  logodaidaloi]; who have said many things very tolerably clever, but which seem as if they had arisen at the moment, trifling, and like animals which change their colour, and too minutely painted.  And this is what makes Herodotus and Thucydides the more admirable; for though they lived at the same time with those men whom I have named, still they kept aloof as far as possible from such amusements, or I should rather say from such follies.  For one of them flows on like a tranquil river, without any attempts at facetiousness; the other is borne on in a more impetuous course, and relates warlike deeds in a warlike spirit; and they are the first men by whom, as Theophrastus says, history was stirred up to dare to speak in a more fluent and adorned style than their predecessors had ventured on.

XIII.  Isocrates lived in the age next to theirs; who is at all times praised by us above all other orators of his class, even though you, O Brutus, sometimes object in a jesting though not in an unlearned spirit.  But you will very likely agree with me when you know why I praise him.  For as Thrasymachus appeared to him to be too concise with his closely measured rhythm, and Gorgias also, though they are the first who are said to have laid down any rules at all for the harmony of sentences; and as Thucydides was somewhat too abrupt and not sufficiently round, if I may use such an expression; he was the first who adopted a system of dilating his ideas with words, and filling them up with better sounding sentences; and as by his own practice he formed those men who were afterwards accounted the most eminent men in speaking and writing, his house got to be reckoned a perfect school of eloquence.  Therefore, as I, when I was praised by our friend Cato, could easily bear to be blamed by the rest; so Isocrates appears to have a right to despise the judgment of