Institutio Oratoria

In continuous and flowing passages a most becoming gesture is slightly to extend the arm with shoulders well thrown back and the fingers opening as the hand moves forward. But when we have to speak in specially rich or impressive style, as, for example, in the passage saxa atiqu solitudines voci respondent, [*](pro Arh. viii. 19. See VIII. iii. 75 and IX. iv. 44. Rocks and solitude make answer to the voice. ) the arm will be thrown out in a stately sidelong sweep and the words will, as it were, expand in unison with the gesture.

As for the hands, without which all action would be crippled and enfeebled, it is scarcely possible to describe the variety of their motions, since they are almost as expressive as words. For other portions of the body merely help the speaker, whereas the hands may almost be said to speak.

Do we not use them to demand, promise, summon, dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express aversion or fear, question or deny? Do we not employ them to indicate joy,

Have they not power to excite and prohibit, to express approval, wonder or shame? Do they not take the place of adverbs and pronouns when we point at places and things? In fact, though the peoples and nations of the earth speak a multitude of tongues, they share in common the universal language of the hands.

The gestures of which I have thus far spoken are such as naturally proceed from us simultaneously with our words. But there are others which indicate things by means of mimicry. For example, you may suggest a sick man by mimicking the gesture of a doctor feeling the pulse, or a harpist by a movement of the hands as though they were plucking the strings. But this is a type of gesture which should be rigorously avoided in pleading.

For the orator should be as unlike a dancer as possible, and his gesture should be adapted rather to his thought than to his actual words, a practice which was indeed once upon a time even adopted by the more dignified performers on the stage. I should, therefore, permit him to direct his hand towards his body to indicate that he is speaking of himself, or to point it at some one else to whom he is alluding, together with other similar gestures which I need not mention. But, on the other hand, I would not allow him to use his hands to imitate attitudes or to illustrate anything he may chance to say.