"that speech should be fitting [_apta_], good Latin, elegant and pure [_pura_].... What clothing is to the body, style is to the thought; for just as the beauty and dignity of the body are heightened or diminished by dress and care, so is thought by words. They are therefore greatly mistaken who think it makes no difference in what words a given thought is expressed if only it can be understood. So also there is the same principle in changing the dress and in varying the speech. It is our first care that our dress be neither mean, nor unsuited to our figure, nor of a wrong pattern. It would be a pity if a figure good in itself were to be spoiled by mean garments; it would be ridiculous if a man were to appear in public in woman's dress, and a disgrace if one were to be seen in a preposterous garb or with his clothes turned back side before. "And so, if anyone tries to put on an affectation of _copia_ before he has attained the purity of the Latin tongue, he is, in my judgment, no less ridiculous than a poor beggar, who, having not a single garment fit to wear, should thereupon change one set of rags for another and come out into the market-place to show off his beggary for wealth. And the oftener he should do this, would he not seem so much the more foolish? I think he would. And just as foolish are those who affect _copia_ and yet cannot say in plain words what they want to say. As if they were ashamed to appear to stammer a little, they make their stammering only the more offensive in every possible way, as if they were on a wager with themselves to talk as barbarously as ever they can. I like to see a wealthy house furnished in great variety, but I want it all to be elegant and not to be filled up with articles of willow and fig-wood and vessels of Samian crockery. At a splendid banquet I like to have many kinds of food brought on, but who could bear it if anyone should serve a hundred sorts of food not one of which was fit to eat?"