To Priscianus. (360?)
You will have heard the latest attacks on our profession -- the usual complaints from people who think that because they cannot do what we do, what we do must not be worth doing. I will not dignify their arguments with a detailed refutation. Suffice it to say that rhetoric has survived critics far more formidable than these, and it will survive these too.
What troubles me more is the indifference of those who should know better. When men of education and taste begin to speak of rhetoric as an ornament rather than a necessity, the foundations of civilized life are being quietly undermined. Speech is not decoration; it is the instrument by which free men govern themselves and resolve their disputes without violence. Take away the training that produces good speakers, and you take away the training that produces good citizens.
But I preach to the converted. You know all this as well as I do, and you practice it better than most. What I need from you is not agreement but encouragement -- and perhaps a few students of the caliber you used to send me. The current crop is not without talent, but I find myself missing the days when the brightest young men in the eastern provinces considered my school the only school worth attending.
Those days may come again, or they may not. In either case, we carry on.
You will have heard the latest attacks on our profession -- the usual complaints from people who think that because they cannot do what we do, what we do must not be worth doing. I will not dignify their arguments with a detailed refutation. Suffice it to say that rhetoric has survived critics far more formidable than these, and it will survive these too.
What troubles me more is the indifference of those who should know better. When men of education and taste begin to speak of rhetoric as an ornament rather than a necessity, the foundations of civilized life are being quietly undermined. Speech is not decoration; it is the instrument by which free men govern themselves and resolve their disputes without violence. Take away the training that produces good speakers, and you take away the training that produces good citizens.
But I preach to the converted. You know all this as well as I do, and you practice it better than most. What I need from you is not agreement but encouragement -- and perhaps a few students of the caliber you used to send me. The current crop is not without talent, but I find myself missing the days when the brightest young men in the eastern provinces considered my school the only school worth attending.
Those days may come again, or they may not. In either case, we carry on.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.