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That it will be worth his while to do so he has the evidence of all critics especially that of Milo when he was eating sardines in his exile, and of Quintilian when he was preparing his lessons on rhetoric.
His special business was the training and direction of the choruses, and he assumed the name of Stesichorus, or leader of choruses, his real name being Tesias. His metres approach more nearly to the epos than those of Aleman. As Quintilian says, he sustained the weight of epic poetry with the lyre.
The Latin Annals quoted under the same name by Quintilian and later grammarians remain involved in mystery, and the difficulty is increased by the circumstance, that there is also quoted under the same name a very detailed exposition of the pontifical law in the Latin language.
Quintilian tells us that they were made to write through perforated tablets, so as to draw the stylus through a kind of furrow; and we learn from Procopius that a similar contrivance was used by the emperor Justinian for signing his name.
"But Virgil is more polished and refined." Gellert shook his head violently. Now that the old writers were being discussed, the German sage overcame his timidity. "We are entirely too widely separated from Virgil to be able to judge of his language and style. I trust to Quintilian, who gives Homer the preference."
Equally elevated in tone, and with a temperate gravity peculiar to itself, is the part of the fourteenth satire which deals with the education of the young. We seem to hear once more in it the enlightened eloquence of Quintilian; in the famous Maxima debetur puero reverentia he sums up in a single memorable phrase the whole spirit of the instructor and the moralist.
To this notice of Pliny's we might add several by Martial; but as these refer to the same facts, adding beside only fulsome praises of the wealthy and dignified litterateur, they need not be quoted here. Quintilian does not mention him. But his silence is no token of disrespect; it is merely an indication that Silius was still alive when the great critic wrote.
Men of feebler mould strive to forget themselves in exciting pleasures, as Statius and Martial; or in courtly society, as the younger Pliny; or in fond study of the past, as Quintilian; or in minute and pedantic erudition, as Aulus Gellius.
Is it possible that the malignant genius of a single historian should outweigh, not only perishable facts, but the large body of imperialist literature which extends from the great Augustans down to Statius and Quintilian? Even if we set aside Juvenal and Suetonius as a rhetorician and a gossipmonger, that only makes the weight Tacitus has to sustain more overwhelming.
If I may parody a celebrated aphorism of Quintilian, I would say, "Magna debetur hominibus reverentia :" in other words, we should carefully examine what it is that we propose to deliver in a permanent form to the taste and understanding of our species. An author ought only to commit to the press the first fruits of his field, his best and choicest thoughts.
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