But I desire, now that I have gone this far, to speak more clearly on these matters. For I hold that to obtain a knowledge of the elements out of which we make and compose all discourses is not so very difficult if anyone entrusts himself, not to those who make rash promises, but to those who have some knowledge of these things. But to choose from these elements those which should be employed for each subject, to join them together, to arrange them properly, and also, not to miss what the occasion demands but appropriately to adorn the whole speech with striking thoughts and to clothe it in flowing and melodious phrase Prose should have the same finish and charm as poetry. See General Introd. p. xxiv. — these things, I hold, require much study and are the task of a vigorous and imaginative mind: Unmistakably this phrase is parodied in Plat. Gorg. 463a : δοκεῖ τοίνυν μοι, ὦ Γοργια, εἶναι τι ἐπιτήδευμα τεχνικὸν μὲν οὔ, ψυχῆς δὲ στοχαστικῆς καὶ ἀνδρείας καὶ φύσει δεινῆς προσομιλεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις for this, the student must not only have the requisite aptitude but he must learn the different kinds of discourse and practice himself in their use; and the teacher, for his part, must so expound the principles of the art with the utmost possible exactness as to leave out nothing that can be taught, and, for the rest, he must in himself set such an example of oratory that the students who have taken form under his instruction and are able to pattern after him will, from the outset, show in their speaking a degree of grace and charm which is not found in others. When all of these requisites are found together, then the devotees of philosophy will achieve complete success; but according as any one of the things which I have mentioned is lacking, to this extent must their disciples of necessity fall below the mark. Now as for the sophists who have lately sprung up and have very recently embraced these pretensions, The sophist before mentioned. The teaching of the older sophists is discussed in Antidosis . even though they flourish at the moment, they will all, I am sure, come round to this position. But there remain to be considered those who lived before our time and did not scruple to write the so-called arts of oratory. Especially the first to write such treatises, Corax and Tisias of Syracuse . τέχνη , like ars in Latin, was the accepted term for a treatise on rhetoric. These must not be dismissed without rebuke, since they professed to teach how to conduct law-suits, picking out the most discredited of terms, Again and again Isocrates expresses his repugnance to this kind of oratory, and in general it was in bad odor. The precepts of Corax (Crow), for example, were called “the bad eggs of the bad Corax.” which the enemies, not the champions, of this discipline might have been expected to employ— and that too although this facility, in so far as it can be taught, is of no greater aid to forensic than to all other discourse. But they were much worse than those who dabble in disputation; for although the latter expounded such captious theories that were anyone to cleave to them in practice he would at once be in all manner of trouble, they did, at any rate, make professions of virtue and sobriety in their teaching, whereas the former, although exhorting others to study political discourse, neglected all the good things which this study affords, and became nothing more than professors of meddlesomeness and greed. The same complaint is made by Aristot. Rh. 1.10 .