“As you yourself wish to become a speaker, and
cannot learn this with greater ease from anyone else,
just attend, dear lad, to all that I shall say, copy me in
everything, and always keep, I beg you, the rules
which I shall bid you to follow. ‘In fact, you may
press on at once; you need not feel any hesitation
or dismay because you have not gone through all the
rites of initiation preliminary to Rhetoric, through
which the usual course of elementary instruction
guides the steps of the senseless and silly at the
cost of great weariness. You will not require them
at all. No, go straight in, as the proverb says, with
unwashen feet, The saying in full was ἀνίπτοις ποσὶν ἀναβαίνων ἐπὶ τὸ στέγος (going up to the roof with unwashed feet), and so can hardly contain any reference to ceremonial purification. Perhaps going up on the roof was tantamount to going to bed, Cf. Song of Solomon, 5, 3. and you will not fare any the worse
for that, even if you are quite in the prevailing
fashion and do not know how to write. Orators
are beyond all that!