LXVIII.  For speaking beautifully and like an orator is, O Brutus, nothing else (as you, indeed, know better than any one) except speaking with the most excellent sentiments and in the most carefully selected language.  And there is no sentiment which produces any fruit to an orator, unless it is expressed in a suitable and polished manner.  Nor is there any brilliancy of words visible unless they are carefully arranged; and rhythm it is which sets off both these excellences.  But rhythm (for it is well to repeat this frequently) is not only not formed in a poetical manner, but even avoids poetry, and is as unlike it as possible.  Not but that rhythm is the same thing, not only in the writings of orators and poets, but even in the conversation of every one who speaks, and in every imaginable sound which we can measure with our ears.  But it is the order of the feet which makes that which is uttered appear like an oration or like a poem.  And this, whether you choose to call it composition, or perfection, or rhythm, must be employed if a man wishes to speak elegantly, not only (as Aristotle and Theophrastus say) that the discourse may not run on interminably like a river, but that it may come to a stop as it ought, not because the speaker wants to take breath, or because the copyist puts down a stop, but because it is compelled to do so by the restrictions of rhythm, and also because a compact style has much greater force than a loose one.  For as we see athletes, and in a similar manner gladiators, act cautiously, neither avoiding nor aiming at anything with too much vehemence, (for over-vehement motions can have no rule;) so that whatever they do in a manner advantageous for their contest, may also have a graceful and pleasing appearance; in like manner oratory does not strike a heavy blow, unless the aim was a well-directed one; nor does it avoid the attack of the adversary successfully, unless even when turning aside the blow it is aware of what is becoming.  And therefore the speeches of those men who do not end their sentences rhythmically seem to me like the motions of those whom the Greeks call [hapalaistrous].  And it is so far from being the case, (as those men say who, either from a want of proper instructors, or from the slowness of their intellect, or from an unwillingness to exert due industry, have not arrived at this skill,) that oratory is enervated by too much attention to the arrangement of words, that without it there can be no energy and no force.

LXIX.  But the matter is one which requires much practice, lest we should do anything like those men who, though they have aimed at this style, have not attained it; so that we must not openly transpose our words in order to make our language sound better; a thing which Lucius Coelius Antipater, in the opening of his history of the Punic War, promises not to do unless it should be absolutely necessary.  Oh the simple man! to conceal nothing from us; and at the same time wise, inasmuch as he is prepared to comply