ABSTRACT
Bu.-If he is to be copied exactly, shall we write verses after his example, without the aid of Apollo and the Muses?
when you except verse. What hinders our making use of this exception at least where he is excelled by others, as in this whole field he is inferior to many, not to say all? How many quotations does he use from Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, poorly translated, in iambic verse, contrary to the practice of the Greeks, and with a freedom which Latin writers of comedy have permitted themselves. If you should wish to do ·something of the same sort would you fear to make a better and more literal translation, lest you be too unlike Cicero? And does he not mar his prose by mingling with it verses of his own translation that fail to harmonize with the rest of the language? Furthermore, since he constantly inserts in his books verses from Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, and Lucilius which smack of that uncouth and uncultured antiquity, wiii it be a point of honor with you to quote like verses, or rather I should say unlike verses, from Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, or Persius, whose works have as much less crudeness as they have more elegance and erudition? Do you fear in this to seem unlike Cicero?
