A Professor of Public Speaking (7)

Then when you draw near the mountain, at first you despair of climbing it, and the thing seems to you just as Aornus[*] looked to the Macedonians when they observed that it was precipitous on every side, truly far from easy even for a bird to fly over, calling for a Dionysus or a Heracles if it were ever going to be taken.

That is how it seems to you at first; and then, after a little, you see two roads. To be more exact, one of them is but a path, narrow, briery, and rough, promising great thirstiness and sweat; Hesiod has been beforehand with us and has already described it very carefully, so that I shall not need to do so.[*] The other, however, is level, flowery, and wellwatered, just as I described it a moment ago, not to detain you by saying the same things over and over when you might even now be a speaker.