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[6] For at this point too I think I should copy the rhetoricians of today who fancy themselves practically gods on earth if they can show themselves twin-tongued, like horse leeches, and think it a splendid feat if they can work a few silly little Greek words, like pieces of mosaic, into their Latin speeches, however out of place these are. Then, if they still need something out of the ordinary, they dig
four or five obsolete words out of mouldy manuscripts with which to cloud the meaning for the reader. The idea is, I suppose, that those who can understand are better pleased with themselves, and those who can't are all the more lost in admiration the less they understand. Indeed there's a special sort of refined pleasure which all my followers take in paying their highest regard to any particularly exotic import from foreign parts, and the more pretentious among them have to laugh and clap their hands and 'twitch their ears' like a donkey does to show the others how well they can understand. 'So much for that'; now I
return to my subject.10
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