Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

But the utterance must be fuller, slower, and consequently sweeter, when the orator says, [*](Phil. ii. xxv. 63. )

But in an assembly of the Homan people, and when he was performing his official functions.

In this passage every sound should e drawn out, we should dwell upon the vowel-sounds and speak fill-throated. Still fuller should be the stream of our voice in the invocation, [*](pro Mil. xxxi. 85. )

You, hills and groves of Alba

; while a tone not far removed from chanting, and dying away to a cadence, should be employed in delivering the phrase, [*](pro Arch. viii. 19. )

Rocks and solitudes answer to the voice.

These are the modulations denounced by Demosthenes [*](de Cor. 90.) and Aeschines, [*](In Ctes. 72. ) but they do not necessarily for that reason merit our disapprobation. For as each of these orators taunts the other with making use of them, it is clear that they were employed by both. We may be sure that Demosthenes did not restrict himself to his ordinary simplicity of tone when he swore by those that fought for their country at Marathon, Plataea and Salamis, [*](De Cor. 60. ) nor did Aeschines employ a colloquial utterance when he lamented for the fate of Thebes. [*](In Ctes. 49. )

There is also an entirely different tone, which might be described as lying almost

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outside the range of the instrument. The Greeks call it bitterness, and it consists in an extravagant acerbity almost beyond the compass of the human voice. It is employed in passages such as, [*](pro Rab. perd. vi. 18. )

Why do you not restrain those cries, the proof of your folly and the evidence of your small numbers?

But the extravagance of which I spoke will come in at the opening, where the orator cries,

Why do you not restrain?