Cicero, Orator (3):
If by chance nature or the power of one’s outstanding genius fails them, or if they are less instructed in the studies of the great arts, let them nevertheless hold the course that they can, for it’s an honorable thing for someone chasing first to rest content with second or third. For among the poets (if I might speak of the Greeks) there isn’t just room for Homer alone or Archilochus or Sophocles or Pindar, but also for people who are of second rank (or even lower) to them. The copiousness of Plato’s work did not deter Aristotle from philosophy, nor did Aristotle, with his admirable knowledge and abundance, put out the flame of others’ studies.
Quod si quem aut natura sua [aut] illa praestantis ingeni vis forte deficiet aut minus instructus erit magnarum artium disciplinis, teneat tamen eum cursum quem poterit; prima enim sequentem honestum est in secundis tertiisque consistere. Nam in poetis non Homero soli locus est, ut de Graecis loquar, aut Archilocho aut Sophocli aut Pindaro, sed horum vel secundis vel etiam infra secundos; nec vero Aristotelem in philosophia deterruit a scribendo amplitudo Platonis, nec ipse Aristoteles admirabili quadam scientia et copia ceterorum studia restinxit.
