Institutio Oratoria

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.

And this rule applies not merely to the hands, but to all gesture and to the voice as well. For in delivering the period stetit soleatus praetor populi Romani, [*]( There in his slippers stood the praetor of the Roman people." Verr. v. xxxiii. 86: see VIII. iii. 64. ) it would be wrong to imitate Verres leaning on his mistress, or in uttering the phrase caedebatur in medio

For even comic actors seem to me to commit a gross offence against the canons of their art when, if they have in the course of some narrative to quote either the words of an old man (as, for example, in the prologue to the Hydria ), [*](Plays of Menander.) or of a woman (as in the ( Georgus [*](Plays of Menander.) ), they litter them in a tremulous or a treble voice, notwithstanding the fact that they are playing the part of a young man. So true is it that certain forms of imitation may be a blemish even in those whose whole art consists in imitation.