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Book 8 - Chapter 1
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Style depends on the judicious choice of words, and the judicious combination of them. Necessity of studying to speak pure Latin.
1. WHAT the Greeks, then, call ϕράσις (phrasis), we call in Latin elocutio. We judge of it in regard to words taken either singly or in conjunction. In reference to words considered singly, we must take care that they be Latin, intelligible, elegant, and appropriate to that which we wish to express; in regard to words in conjunction, we must see that they be correct, well arranged, and diversified occasionally with figures. 2. What was necessary to be said, however, on the subject of speaking in pure Latin and with correctness, I stated in the first book, when I was treating on grammar. But there I only observed that words should not be impure; here it will not be improper to intimate that they should have nothing provincial or foreign about them; for we may find many authors not deficient in the arts of style, who, we should say, express themselves rather affectedly than in pure Latin; as the Athenian old woman called Theophrastus, a man otherwise of great eloquence, a stranger, from observing his affected use of a single word, and being questioned on the subject, replied that she had discovered him to be a foreigner only from his speaking in a manner too Attic. 3. In Livy, again, a writer of extraordinary elegance, Asinius Pollio thought that a certain Patavinity was discoverable. Let all our words, therefore, and even our tone of voice, if possible, declare us to be natives of this city, that our speech may appear truly Roman, and not merely to have been admitted into citizenship.
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