The little treatise of Caecilius on sublimity, which we examined together, my dearest Postumius Terentianus, seemed to us, as you know, more humble than the whole subject deserved, and to lay scarcely any hold upon the points that matter; nor did it bring much benefit to the reader, which is what a writer ought above all to aim at. In every technical work two things are demanded: first, to show what the subject is; and second in order, but more authoritative in force, how we may make this very thing our own and by what methods. Caecilius, then, takes endless pains to show by countless examples (as if to people who did not know) what sort of thing the sublime is; but the means by which we might bring our own natural powers up to a measure of greatness he passed over, somehow, as though it were not necessary. §1
It may be, however, that the man is less to be blamed for what he left out than to be praised for the conception itself and for his earnestness. And since you have urged me too to put together some sort of memorandum on sublimity for your sake, come, let us consider whether anything we have observed seems serviceable to men of public life. You yourself, my friend, will pass the truest verdict on the particulars, as your nature prompts and as is fitting; for he spoke well who said that what we have most akin to the gods is to do good and to speak the truth. §2
Writing, dearest friend, to you who are versed in education, I am almost relieved of the need to lay down at length, by way of preface, that sublimity is a kind of summit and pre-eminence in language; and that the greatest poets and prose-writers attained their primacy from no other source than this, and clothed their own renown in eternity. §3
For the sublime does not lead the hearer to mere persuasion but to ecstasy (ἔκστασις); and on every occasion the marvellous, with its astounding effect, prevails over what is merely persuasive and pleasing, since persuasion is in our own power for the most part, whereas these things, applying an irresistible mastery and force, take their stand above every hearer. Skill in invention, and the ordering and economy of our matter, we see emerging only by little and little out of the whole texture of a discourse; but a sublime stroke, well-timed, like a thunderbolt scatters everything before it and at once displays the orator's power in its full strength. These observations, my dearest Terentianus, you yourself, I think, would suggest from your own experience. §4