heroic rhythm is a grander one than is admissible in prose, and that an iambic is too like ordinary conversation.  Accordingly, he does not approve of a style which is lowly and abject, or of one which is too lofty and, as it were, on stilts:  but still he wishes for one full of dignity, in order to strike those who hear it with the greater admiration.  But he calls a trochee, which occupies the same time as a choreus, [Greek:  kordax], because its contracted and brief character is devoid of dignity.  Accordingly, he approves of the paeon; and says that all men employ it, but that all men are not themselves aware when they do employ it; and that there is a third or middle way between those two, but that those feet are formed in such a way, that in every one of them there is either a time, or a time and a half, or two times.  Therefore, those men of whom I have spoken have considered convenience only, and disregarded dignity.  For the iambic and the dactyl are those which are most usually employed in verse; and, therefore, as we avoid verses in making speeches, so also a recurrence of these feet must be avoided.  For oratory is a different thing from poetry, nor are there any two things more contrary to one another than that is to verses.  But the paeon is that foot which, of all others, is least adapted to verse, on which account oratory admits it the more willingly.  But Ephorus will not even admit that the spondee, which he condemns, is equivalent to the dactyl, which he approves of.  For he thinks that feet ought to be measured by their syllables, not by their quantity; and he does the same in regard to the trochee, which in its quantity and times is equivalent to an iambic; but which is a fault in an oration, if it be placed at the end, because a sentence ends better with a long syllable.

And all this, which is also contained in Aristotle, is said by Theophrastus and Theodectes about the paeon.  But my opinion is, that all feet ought to be jumbled together and confused, as it were, in an oration; and that we could not escape blame if we were always to use the same feet; because an oration ought to be neither metrical, like a poem, nor inharmonious, like the conversation of the common people.  The one is so fettered by rules that it is manifest that it is designedly arranged as we see it; the other is so loose as to appear ordinary and vulgar; so that you are not pleased with the one, and you hate the other.

Let oratory then be, as I have said above, mingled and regulated with a regard to rhythm; not prosaic, nor on the other hand sacrificed wholly to rhythm; composed chiefly of the paeon, (since that is the opinion of the wisest author on the subject,) with many of the other feet which he passes over intermingled with it.