Kitap 8
pr.14
And if this excellence was to be found in no orator up to his own day, and not even in himself or Lucius Crassus, we may regard it as certain that the reason why they and their predecessors lacked this gift was its extreme difficulty of acquisition. Again, Cicero Cic. Or. xiv. 44; holds that, while invention and arrangement are within the reach of any man of good sense, eloquence belongs to the orator alone, and consequently it was on the rules for the cultivation of eloquence that he expended the greatest care.
pr.15
That he was justified in so doing is shown clearly by the actual name of the art of which I am speaking. For the verb eloqui means the production and communication to the audience of all that the speaker has conceived in his mind, and without this power all the preliminary accomplishments of oratory are as useless as a sword that is kept permanently concealed within its sheath.
pr.16
Therefore it is on this that teachers of rhetoric concentrate their attention, since it cannot possibly be acquired without the assistance of the rules of artit is this which is the chief object of our study, the goal of all our exercises and all our efforts at imitation, and it is to this that we devote the energies of a lifetime; it is this that makes one orator surpass his rivals, this that makes one style of speaking preferable to another.
