Note 360 — Chapter II · THE CONTEMPORARIES OF QUINTILIAN.

This letter contains an interesting mot of Aquilius Regulus, the brilliant and questionable orator-informer, of whom Pliny frequently speaks with a sort of mixture of admiration and dislike, reminding one of the way in which men used to speak of Lord Chancellor Westbury. “You,” said Regulus to him, “hunt out everything in your brief. I see the throat at once, and go for it”—ego jugulum statim video, hunc premo. There is some point in Pliny’s retort that people who do this not infrequently hit knee or ankle instead.