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Now a man sitting as a judge in court is bound to listen without regard either to enmity or favour, but in sober judgement with regard to justice; but at scholarly lectures no law and no oath prohibits us from receiving the lecturer with goodwill. Indeed, the ancients gave Hermes a place beside the Graces from a feeling that discourse demands, above all, graciousness and friendliness. For it is not possible for a speaker to be a failure so abject and complete that he does not afford something meriting commendation, an original thought, a reminiscence from others, the very subject and purpose of his discourse, or at least the style and arrangement of his remarks, Just as amid urchin’s foot and the rough rest-harrow Flowering snowdrops grow, delicate in their bloom.Source unknown; cf. Plutarch, Moralia, 485 A and 621 B. For when some have declaimed a panegyric upon vomiting or fever, nay I vow, even upon a kitchenpot, not without a certain amount of plausibility, how could it be that a discourse delivered by a man who in some sort bears the repute and name of philosopher, should not offer, at some point, to benevolent and humane hearers some respite and opportunity for commendation ? We know, at any rate, that all persons in the bloom of youth do somehow or other, as Plato Plato, Republic, 474 D. says, act as a stimulus upon the man inclined to love; the fair ones he names children of the gods, the dark manly, while the hook-nosed he endearingly terms kingly, the snub-nosed fetching, the sallow honey-hued, and so welcomes and likes them all; for love, like ivy, is clever in attaching itself to any support. Much more, then, will the scholar and diligent hearer always be ready to discover some cause for which he may openly bestow on every speaker some commendation not inappropriate. So Plato,Plato, Phaedrus, 234 E. although he cannot commend Lysias’s speech for invention, and although he condemns its arrangement as disorderly, nevertheless commends the style, and that each word was clearly and roundly turned. One might find fault with Archilochus for his subject matter, Parmenides for his versification, Phocylides as commonplace, Euripides for his loquacity, and Sophocles for his unevenness; and it is equally true of the orators that one of them has no power to portray character, another is slow to rouse emotion, another is lacking in grace; yet it is a fact that each one of them is commended for the special faculty with which Nature has taught him to move us and draw us on. It follows, then, that there is ample and abundant opportunity for hearers to show friendliness toward those who are speaking. For some it is quite enough, even if we do not attest this by the voice, that we vouchsafe to them a gentleness of glance, a serenity of countenance, and a disposition kindly and free from annoyance.
