Institutio Oratoria

We must also beware of confusing our utterance by excessive volubility, which results in disregard of punctuation, loss of emotional power, and sometimes in the clipping of words. The opposite fault is excessive slowness of speech, which is a sign of lack of readiness in invention, tends by its sluggishness to render our hearers inattentive, and, further, wastes the time allotted to us for speaking, [*](aquam perdit. Lit. wastes water. The reference is to the clepsydra or water-clock employed for the measurement of time. ) a consideration which is of some importance. Our speech must be ready, but not precipitate, under control, but not slow,

while we must not take breath so often as to break up our sentence, nor, on the other hand, sustain it until it fails us from exhaustion. For the sound produced by loss of breath is disagreeable; we gasp like a drowning man and fill our lungs with long drawn inhalations at in appropriate moments, giving the impression that our action is due not to choice, but to compulsion. Therefore, in attacking a period of abnormal length, we should collect our breath, but quickly, noiselessly and imperceptibly. On other occasions we shall be able to take breath at the natural breaks in the substance of our speech.

But we must exercise our breathing capacity to make it as great as possible. To produce this result Demosthenes used to recite as many successive lines as

Sometimes the breath, although capable of sustained effort and sufficiently full and clear, lacks firmness when exerted, had for that reason is liable to become tremulous, like bodies which, although to all appearances sound, receive insufficient support from the sinews. This the Greeks call βρασμός. [*](βράγχος is generally read, but the word is used in the sense of hotrseness, which is not what Quintilian describes. I would read βρασμός, a word meaning effervescence, shaking, shivering. Here = tremolo. ) There are some too who, owing to the loss of teeth, do not draw in the breath naturally, but suck it in with a hissing sound. There are others who pant incessantly and so loudly that it is perfectly audible within them: they remind one of heavily-laden beasts of burden straining against the yoke.