A Professor of Public Speaking (21-25)

“Let your friends spring to their feet constantly and pay you for their dinners by lending you a hand whenever they perceive that you are about to fall down, and giving you a chance to find what to say next in the intervals afforded by their applause. Of course you must make it your business to have a well-attuned chorus of your own.[*] “There you have what concerns the speaking. Afterwards let them[*] dance attendance upon you as you go away with your head swathed in your mantle, reviewing what you have said. And if any one accosts you, make marvellous assertions about yourself, be extravagant in your self-praise, and make yourself a nuisance to him.[*] ‘What was Demosthenes beside me?’ ‘Perhaps one of the ancients is in the running with me!’ and that sort of thing.

“I almost omitted the thing that is most important and most needful for maintaining your reputation. Laugh at all the speakers. If anyone makes a fine speech, let it appear that he is parading something that belongs to someone else and is not his own; and if he is mildly criticized, let everything that he says be objectionable. At public lectures, go in after everybody else, for that makes you conspicuous; and when everybody is silent, let fall an uncouth expression of praise which will draw the attention of the company and so annoy them that they will all be disgusted at the vulgarity of your

“For the rest, you need have no fear. Effrontery and shamelessness, a prompt lie, with an oath to confirm it always on the edge of your lips, jealousy and hatred of everyone, abuse and plausible slanders —all this will make you famous and distinguished in an instant.

“So much for your life in public and in the open. In your private life, be resolved to do anything and everything—to dice, to drink deep, to live high and to keep mistresses, or at all events to boast of it even if you do not do it, telling everyone about it and showing notes that purport to be written by women. You must aim to be elegant, you know, and take pains to create the impression that women are devoted to you. This also will be set down to the credit of your rhetoric by the public, who will infer from it that your fame extends even to the women’s quarters. And I say—do not be ashamed to have the name of being an effeminate, even if you are bearded or actually bald. There should be some who hang about you on that account, but if there are none, your slaves will answer. This helps your rhetoric in many ways; it increases your shameless-

“If you thoroughly learn all this, my lad—and you can, for there is nothing difficult about it—I promise you confidently that right soon you will turn out an excellent speaker, just like myself. And there is no need for me to tell you what will follow—all the blessings that will instantly accrue to you from Rhetoric. You see my own case. My father was an insignificant fellow without even a clear title to his freedom, who had been a slave above Xois and Thmuis,[*] and my mother was a seamstress in the slums. For myself, as my personal attractions were considered not wholly contemptible, at first I lived with an ill-conditioned, stingy admirer just for my keep. But then I detected the easi-

I was bundled out neck and crop, yet even then I was not at a loss for the necessaries of life. No, I enjoy the name of a speaker, and prove myself such in the courts, generally playing false to my clients, although I promise the poor fools to deliver their juries to them.[*] To be sure I am generally unsuccessful, but the palm-leaves at my door are green and twined with fillets, for I use them as bait for my victims.[*] But even to be detested by everyone, to be notorious for the badness of my character and the still greater badness of my speeches, to be pointed out with the finger—‘ There he is, the man who, they say, is foremost in all iniquity!’—seems to me no slight achievement.

“This is the advice which I bestow upon you. By Our Lady of the Stews, I bestowed it upon myself long ago, and am deeply grateful to myself for it.”