A numerous band of orators follows, for Athens produced ten of them, contemporary with one another.  Demosthenes was by far the chief of them, and in a manner held to be the only model for eloquence; so great is his force; so closely together are all things interwoven in his discourse, and attended with a certain self-command; so great is his accuracy, he never adopting any idle expression; and so just his precision that nothing lacking, nothing redundant, can be found in him.  AEschines is more full, more diffusive, and appears the more grand, as he has more breadth.  He has more flesh, but not so many sinews.

Lysias and Isocrates

Lysias, older than these, is subtle and elegant, and if it is enough for the orator to instruct, none could be found more perfect than he is.  There is nothing idle, nothing far-fetched in him; yet is he more like a clear brook than a great river.  Isocrates, in a different kind of eloquence, is fine and polished, and better adapted for engaging in a mock than a real battle.  He was attentive to all the beauties of discourse, and had his reasons for it, having intended his eloquence for schools and not for contentions at the bar.  His invention was easy, he was very fond of graces and embellishments, and so nice was he in his composition that his extreme care is not without reprehension.

Plato

Among philosophers, by whom Cicero confesses he has been furnished with many resourceful aids to eloquence, who doubts that Plato is the chief, whether we consider the acuteness of his dissertations, or his divine Homerical faculty of elocution?  He soars high above prose, and even common poetry, which is poetry only because comprised in a certain number of feet; and he seems to me not so much endowed with the wit of a man, as inspired by a sort of Delphic oracle.

Xenophon

What shall I say of Xenophon’s unaffected agreeableness, so unattainable by any imitation that the Graces themselves seem to have composed his language?  The testimony of the ancient comedy concerning Pericles, is very justly applicable to him, “That the Goddess of Persuasion had seated herself on his lips.”

Aristotle and Theophrastus

And what shall I say of the elegance of the other disciples of Socrates?  What of Aristotle?  I am at a loss to know what most to admire in him, his vast and profound erudition, or the great number of his writings, or his pleasing style and manner, or the inventions and penetration of his wit, or the variety of his works.  And as to Theophrastus, his elocution has something so noble and so divine that it may be said that from these qualities came his name.

Vergil

In regard to our Roman authors, we can not more happily begin than with Vergil, who of all their poets and ours in the epic style, is without any doubt the one who comes nearest to Homer.  Tho obliged to give way to Homer’s heavenly and immortal genius, yet in Vergil are to be found a greater exactness and care, it being incumbent on him to take more pains; so that what we lose on the side of eminence of qualities, we perhaps gain on that of justness and equability.