Book 11
1.32
In the young, however, we can endure a rich and even, perhaps, a risky style. On the other hand, a dry, careful and compressed style is unpleasing in the young as suggesting the affectation of severity, since even the authority of character that goes with age is considered as premature in young men. Soldiers are best suited by a simple style.
1.33
Those, again, who make ostentatious profession, as some do, of being philosophers, would do well to avoid most of the ornaments of oratory, more especially those which consist in appeals to the passions, which they regard as moral blemishes. So, too, the employment of rare words and of rhythmical structure are incongruous with their profession.
1.34
For their beards and gloomy brows are ill-suited not merely to luxuriance of style, such as we find in Cicero's Rocks and solitudes answer to the voice, Pro Arch. viii. 19. but even to full-blooded passages as, For on you I call, ye hills and groves of Alba; I call you to bear me witness, and ye, too, fallen altars of the Albans, that were once the peers and equals of the holy places of Rome. Pro Mil. xxxi. 85.
