Who then can endure those men who do not agree with such authorities as these?  Unless indeed they are ignorant that they ever gave any such rules.  And if that is the case, (and I really believe it is,) what then?  Have they no senses of their own to be guided by?  Have they no natural idea of what is useless?  None of what is harsh, cramped, lame, or superfluous?  When verses are being repeated, the whole theatre raises an outcry if there is one syllable too few or too many.  Not that the mob knows anything about feet or metre; nor do they understand what it is that offends them, or know why or in what it offends them.  But nevertheless nature herself has placed in our ears a power of judging of all superfluous length and all undue shortness in sounds, as much as of grave and acute syllables.

LII.  Do you wish then, O Brutus, that we should give a more accurate explanation of this whole topic, than those men themselves have done who have delivered these and other rules to us?  Or may we be content with those which have been delivered by them?  But why do I ask whether you wish this? when I know from your letters, written in a most scholar-like spirit, that you wish for it above all things.  First of all, then, the origin of a well-adapted and rhythmical oration shall be explained, then the cause of it, then its nature, and last of all its use.

For they who admire Isocrates above all things, place this among his very highest panegyrics, that he was the first person who added rhythm to prose writing.  For they say that, as he perceived that orators were listened to with seriousness, but poets with pleasure, he then aimed at rhythm so as to use it in his orations both for the sake of giving pleasure, and also that variety of sound might prevent weariness.  And this is said by them in some degree correctly, but not wholly so.  For we must confess that no one was ever more thoroughly skilled in that sort of learning than Isocrates; but still the original inventor of rhythm was Thrasymachus; all whose writings are even too carefully rhythmical.  For, as I said a little while ago, the principle of things like one another being placed side by side, sentence after sentence being ended in a similar manner, and contraries being compared with contraries, so that, even if one took no pains about it, most sentences would end musically, was first discovered by Gorgias; but he used it without any moderation.  And that is, as I have said before one of the three divisions of arrangement.  Both of these men were predecessors of Isocrates; so that it was in his moderation, not in his invention, that he is superior to them.  For he is more moderate in the way in which he inverts or alters the sense of words; and also in his attention to rhythm.  But Gorgias is a more insatiable follower of this system, and (even according to his own admission) abuses these elegances in an unprecedented way; but Isocrates (who while a young man had heard Gorgias when he was