I would use examples from my own works if you had not read them; I would use them from the works of others, if I could find any; or Greek examples, if it were becoming to do so.  But there are very few speeches of Crassus extant, and those are not forensic speeches.  There is nothing extant of Antonius’s, nothing of Cotta’s, nothing of Sulpicius’s.  Hortensius spoke better than he wrote.  But we must form our own opinions as to the value of this energy which we are looking for, since we have no instance to produce; or if we are still on the look out for examples, we must take them from Demosthenes, and we must cite them from that passage in the speech on the trial of Ctesiphon, where he ventures to speak of his own actions and counsels and services to the republic.  That oration in truth corresponds so much to that idea which is implanted in our minds that no higher eloquence need be looked for.

XXXIX.  But now there remains to be considered the form and character of the eloquence which we are searching for; and what it ought to be like may be understood from what has been said above.  For we have touched upon the lights of words both single and combined, in which the orator will abound so much that no expression which is not either dignified or elegant will ever fall from his mouth.  And there will be frequent metaphors of every sort; because they, on account of their resemblance to something else, move the minds of the hearers, and turn them this way and that way; and the very agitation of thought when operating in quick succession is a pleasure of itself.

And those other lights, if I may so call them, which are derived from the arrangement of words, are a great ornament to a speech.  For they are like those things which are called decorations in the splendid ornamenting of a theatre or a forum; not because they are the only ornaments, but because they are the most excellent ones.  The principle is the same in the case of these things which are the lights, and as one may say, the decorations of oratory:  when words are repeated and reiterated, or are put down with slight alterations; or when the sentences are often commenced with the same word, or end with the same word; or both begin and end alike; or when the same word occurs in the same place in consecutive sentences; or when one word is repeated in different senses; or when sentences end with similar sounds; or when contrary circumstances are related in many contrary manners; or when the speech proceeds by gradations; or when the conjunctions are taken away and each member of the sentence is uttered unconnectedly; or when we pass over some points and explain why we do so; or when we of our own accord correct ourselves, as if we blamed ourselves; or if we use any exclamation of admiration, or complaint; or when the same noun is often repeated in different cases.