Xenocrates
3. Another philosopher, who wrote a very indifferent elegiac poem; which gives Diogenes occasion to remark that, when poets apply themselves to prose composition, they succeed, but when prose writers attempt poetry, they fail; since the one endowment comes from nature, the other from art. Many examples might be cited to confirm this observation; but there are some instances against it: for example, the prose of Virgil is said to have been as much inferior to his poetry, as the poetry of Cicero was to his prose. (Menag. ad loc.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.