[48]
pre fortissimo viro dicere incipientem
timere.1 Although the general tone of the passage is
restrained and subdued, since it is not merely an
exordium, but the exordium of a man suffering from
serious anxiety, still something fuller and bolder is
required in the tone, when he says pro fortissiomo viro,
than when he says etsi cereor and turpe sit and timere.
1 pro Mil. i. 1 sqq. “Although I fear, gentlemen, that it may be discreditable that I should feel afraid on rising to defend the harvest of men, and though it is far from becoming that, whereas Titus Annius is more concerned for the safety of the State than for his own, I should he unable to bring a like degree of courage to aid me in pleading his cause; still, the strange appearance of this novel tribunal dismays my eyes, which, whithersoever they turn, look in vain for the customary aspect of the forum and the time-honoured usage of the courts. For your bench is not surrounded, as it used to be, by a ring of spectators,” etc.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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