[41]
Sometimes again we urge
good men to adopt a somewhat unseemly course,
while we advise men of poor character to take a
course in which the object is the advantage of
those who seek our advice. I realise the thought
that will immediately occur to my reader: “Do you
then teach that this should be done or think it
right?” Cicero1 might clear me from blame in the
matter; for he writes to Brutus in the following
terms, after setting forth a number of things that
[p. 501]
might honourably be urged on Caesar: “Should I be
a good man to advise this? No. For the end of him
who gives advice is the advantage of the man to
whom he gives it. But, you say, your advice is right.
Certainly, but there is not always room for what
is right in giving advice.” However, this is a
somewhat abstruse question, and does not concern
deliberative oratory alone. I shall therefore reserve
it for my twelfth and concluding book.2
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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