Institutio Oratoria

There is also an unprofitable imitation of art, a kind of ματαιοτεχνία which is neither good nor bad, but merely involves a useless expenditure of labour, reminding one of the man who shot a continuous stream of vetch-seeds from a distance through the eye of a needle, without ever missing his aim, and was rewarded by Alexander, who was a witness of the display, with the present of a bushel of vetch-seeds, a most appropriate reward.

It is to such men that I would compare those who spend their whole time at the expense of much study and energy in composing declamations, which they aim at making as unreal as possible. The rhetoric on the other hand, which I am endeavouring to establish and the ideal of which I have in my mind's eye, that rhetoric which befits a good man and is in a word the only true rhetoric, will be a virtue.