On Medicine in Eight Books

and indeed always the best authors. original: "Quales omnino necesse est fuisse, si sola confisus ingenii magnitudine, nulla artis exercitatione comparata notitia, tam admirandum nobis opus concinnare est aggressus. Quod me non credere, jam supra dixi." These are of such a sort as they must have been, if he set out to compose such an admirable work for us, relying only on the magnitude of his genius without any knowledge acquired through the practice of the art. I have already said above that I do not believe this. Quintilianus a Roman rhetorician is the author who claims that he followed the Scepticos Skeptics in his writing. If he meant this regarding the ornamentation of speech, it may be conceded; it is not easily granted if he meant it regarding the method of doctrine. For he wrote in such a way that he by no means hesitated not only to profess his own opinion openly, but also to bring the views of the greatest men to the anvil of both reason and experience. Indeed, he even changed, with the liberty necessary and commendable in the arts, the precepts of those who, in their healing and writing, showed themselves to be straying—not so much from the tenets and doctrine of their elders, as from the duty of a physician, which Asclepiades used to say, according to our author, is to cure safely, quickly, and pleasantly. Celsus, however, used such modesty everywhere that, although he never valued the author as much as he valued the health of human beings, he nevertheless did not defraud anyone of their due praise.