Book 3
1.20
But it was Cicero who shed the greatest light not only on the practice but on the theory of oratory; for he stands alone among Romans as combining the gift of actual eloquence with that of teaching the art. With him for The younger Hermagoras, a rhetorician of the Augustan age. predecessor it would be more modest to be silent, but for the fact that he himself describes his Rhetorica sc. the de Inventione. as a youthful indiscreition, while in his later works on oratory he deliberately omitted the discussion of certain minor points, on which instruction is generally desired.
1.21
Cornificius wrote a good deal, Stertinius something, and the elder Gallio a little on the same subject. But Gallio's predecessors, Celsus and Laenas, and in our own day Verginius, Pliny and Tutilius, have treated rhetoric with greater accuracy. Even to-day we have some distinguished writers on oratory who, if they had dealt with the subject more comprehensively, would have saved me the trouble of writing this book. But I will spare the names of the living. The time will come when they will reap their meed of praise; for their merits will endure to after generations, while the calunmies of envy will perish utterly.
