![]() Consequently as all those methods of paying you reverence are open to everybody else, to me is left only the presumption of treating you with more intimate respect. ![]() I have tried to put on a bold face, and yet have not succeeded, as your grandeur meets me by another route and the rods of office that your genius bears make me move on yet further: in no other person ever radiate more genuinely the dictatorial power of oratory and the tribunician authority of wit! How eloquently you thunder forth your father's praises and your brother's fame! How great you are in the poet's art! O mighty fertility of genius - you have contrived a way to imitate your brother also.įor that presumption therefore you will debit the responsibility to yourself, and will grant yourself pardon on the score of my offence. § 1.2.1 But who could judge the value of these compositions with confidence when about to submit to the verdict of your talent, especially when that verdict has been invited? for formal dedication of the work to you puts one in a different position from mere publication. In the latter case I could have said: 'Why does your Highness read that? It was written for the common herd, the mob of farmers and of artisans, and after them for students who have nothing else to occupy their time: why do you put yourself on the jury? You were not on this panel when I took the contract for this undertaking: I knew you to be too great for me to think you likely to descend to this! Moreover even in the court of learning there is an official procedure for challenging the jury: it is employed even by Marcus Cicero, who where genius is in question stands outside all hazard. ![]() It may surprise us, but Cicero calls in the aid of council - nor yet for the very learned Manius Persius I don't want to read this, I want Junius Congus. § 1.3.1 But if Lucilius, the originator of critical sniffing, thought fit to say this, and Cicero to quote it, especially when writing his Theory of the Constitution, how much more reason have we to stand on the defensive against a particular juryman? But for my part at the present I have deprived myself of these defences by my nomination, as it matters a great deal whether one obtains a judge by lot or by one's own selection, and one's style of entertainment ranks quite differently with a guest one has invited and one who has offered himself. ![]() The candidates in a hotly contested election deposited sums of money with Cato, that resolute foe of corruption, who enjoyed a defeat at the polls as an honour obtained free of charge and they gave out that they did this in the defence of the highest among human possessions, their innocence.
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