Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Such an orator will also exalt his style by amplification and rise even to hyperbole, as when Cicero [*](Phil. II. xxvii. 67. The passage continues: could scarce, methinks, have swallowed with such speed so many things, scattered in so many places. ) cries,

What Charybdis was ever so voracious!
or
By the god of truth, even Ocean's self,
etc. (I choose these fine passages as being familiar to the student). It is such an one that will bring down the Gods to form part of his audience or even to speak with him, as in the following,
For on you I call, ye hills and groves of Alba, on you, I say, ye fallen altars of the Albans, altars that were once the peers and equals
v10-12 p.487
of the holy places of Rome.
[*](pro, Mil. xxxi. 85. ) This is he that will inspire anger or pity, and while he speaks the judge will call upon the gods and weep, following him wherever he sweeps him from one emotion to another, and no longer asking merely for instruction.

Wherefore if one of these three styles has to be selected to the exclusion of the others, who will hesitate to prefer this style to all others, since it is by far the strongest and the best adapted to the most important cases?

For Homer himself assigns to Menelaus [*](Mil. iii. 214. The words which Quintilian translates by non deerrare verbhis are οὐδ᾽ ἀφαμαρτοεπής, no stumbler in speech, rather than correct in speech. ) an eloquence, terse and pleasing, exact (for that is what is meant by

making no errors in words
) and devoid of all redundance, which qualities are virtues of the first type: and he says that from the lips of Nestor [*](Il. i. 249. ) flowed speech sweeter than honey, than which assuredly we can conceive no greater delight: but when he seeks to express the supreme gift of eloquence possessed by Ulysses [*](Il. iii. 221. ) he gives a mighty voice and a vehemence of oratory equal to the snows of winter in the abundance and the vigour of its words.

With him then,
he says,
no mortal will contend, and men shall look upon him as on a god.
[*]( A blend of Il. iii. 223 and Od. viii. 173. ) It is this force and impetuosity that Eupolis admires in Pericles, this that Aristophanes [*](Aeh. 530. Then in his wrath Pericles the Olympian lightened and thundered and threw all Greece into confusion. ) compares to the thunderbolt, this that is the power of true eloquence.