IMITATION, in Oratory, is an endeavour to resemble a speaker or writer in those qualities regarding which we propose them to ourselves as patterns. The first historians amongst the Romans were, according to Cicero, very dry and jejune, till they began to imitate the Greeks, and then they became their rivals. It is well known how closely Virgil has imitated Homer in his Aeneid, Hesiod in his Georgics, and Theocritus in his Ecologues. Terence copied from Menander, and Plautus from Epicurus, as we learn from Horace (lib. ii. Ep. ad August.), who himself owes many of his beauties to the Greek lyric poets. Cicero appears, from many passages in his writings, to have imitated the Greek orators. Thus Quintilian said of him, that he expressed the strength and sublimity of Demosthenes, the copiousness of Plato, and the delicacy of Isocrates.