Institutio Oratoria

An impudent, disorderly, or angry tone is always unseemly, no matter who it be that assumes it; and it becomes all the more reprehensible in proportion to the age, rank, and experience of the speaker. But we are familiar with the sight of certain brawling advocates who are restrained neither by respect for the court nor by the recognised methods and

For a man's character is generally revealed and the secrets of his heart are laid bare by his manner of speaking, and there is good ground for the Greek aphorism that,

as a man lives, so will he speak.

Again, different kinds of eloquence suit different speakers. For example, a full, haughty, bold and florid style would be less becoming to an old man than that restrained, mild and precise style to which Cicero refers, when he says that his style is beginning to grow grey-haired. [*](Brut. ii. 8. ) It is the same with their style as their clothes; purple and scarlet raiment goes ill with grey hairs.

In the young, however, we can endure a rich and even, perhaps, a risky style. On the other hand, a dry, careful and compressed style is unpleasing in the young as suggesting the affectation of severity, since even the authority of character that goes with age is considered as premature in young men. Soldiers are best suited by a simple style.

Those, again, who make ostentatious profession, as some do, of being philosophers, would do well to avoid most of the ornaments of oratory, more especially those which consist in appeals to the passions, which they regard as moral blemishes. So, too, the employment of rare words and of rhythmical structure are incongruous with their profession.

For

Rocks and solitudes answer to the voice,

For on you I call, ye hills and groves of Alba; I call you to bear me witness, and ye, too, fallen altars of the Albans, that were once the peers and equals of the holy places of Rome.

But the public man, who is truly wise and devotes himself not to idle disputations, but to the administration of the state, from which those who call themselves philosophers have withdrawn themselves afar, will gladly employ every method that may contribute to the end which he seeks to gain by his eloquence, although he will first form a clear conception in his mind as to what aims are honourable and what are not.

There is a form of eloquence which is becoming in the greatest men, but inadmissible in others. For example, the methods of eloquence employed by commanders and conquerors in their hour of triumph are to a great extent to be regarded as in a class apart. The comparison of the eloquence of Plompey and Cato the younger, who slew himself in the civil war, will illustrate my meaning. The former was extraordinarily eloquent in the description of his own exploits, while the latter's powers were displayed in debates in the senate.