Chapter 12: Sublimity and Development

Now, though, the definition of the technical writers is not satisfactory to me. Development, they say, is a speech or writing which sets greatness around the subject. This could be a definition common to sublimity and emotions and tropes, since indeed these, too, set some sort of greatness around speeches and writings. But to me these appear to diverge from one another: sublimity lies in what has been made lofty, development in multiplicity. For this reason sublimity often subsists even in a single concept, but development subsists entirely in quantity and a kind of abundance. 2. And development is, to put it in a formula, a filling up together of all the segments and topics that bring something to the subjects, one which strengthens what is being argued by dwelling on it, and which differs from proof in this way-because though the proof demonstrates what is being sought.…

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… [Plato] like some sea, pours forth his expansive greatness most richly on many occasions. 3. As a result, I take it that though the orator is more emotional and, throughout his speeches and writings, has more fervor and fire, the other, set in a bold and appropriately great impressiveness, does not tum cold-but he does not strain himself towards the subject in the same way. 4. And, dearest Terentianus, in no other ways than these is it my opinion-and I am speaking as if it were allowed for us Greeks to know something about this-that Cicero differs from Demosthenes in great passages. You see, Demosthenes is great by a sublimity that is abrupter, Cicero by a profusion; while our man, because he is such as to set everything on fire and catch it by his force, swiftness, power, may be likened to lightning or a thunderbolt, Cicero, I take it, is like some conflagration that absorbs from all sides, feeds everywhere, and rolls on, for he has great capacity for remaining on the topic and for igniting again at various times and in various ways and for stirring himself up again by taking in more fuel. 5. But you would decide these things critically better than I. But the right moments for Demosthenes’ sublimity and hypertensings are in his powerful passages and his intense emotions and his knowing when one ought to astound the audience. The right moment for a Ciceronian profusion comes when one must deluge the audience-a time fitting to address oneself to commonplaces and peroration and for stepping alongside the subject and for all of the expressive and epideictic passages, for writings on history and nature, and no small number of other kinds.