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[12] Of these Protagoras and Gorgias are said to have been the first to treat commonplaces, Prodicus, Hippias, Protagoras and Thrasymachus the first to handle emotional themes. Cicero in the Brutus1 states that nothing in the ornate rhetorical style was ever committed to writing before Pericles, and that certain of his speeches are still extant. For my part I have been unable to discover anything in [p. 377] the least worthy of his great reputation for eloquence,2 and am consequently the less surprised that there should be some who hold that he never committed anything to writing, and that the writings circulating under his name are the works of others.

1 vii. 27.

2 cp. XII, ii. 22: x. 49, where Quintilian asserts that all the writings of Pericles have been lost.

Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.

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load focus Introduction (Harold Edgeworth Butler, 1920)
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  • Cross-references in notes to this page (1):
    • Sir Richard C. Jebb, The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos, Introduction
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (3):
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