Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Eloquence has, therefore, a quantity of different aspects, but it is sheer folly to inquire which of these the orator should take as his model, since every species that is in itself correct has its use, and what is commonly called style of speaking does not depend on the orator. For he will use all styles, as circumstances may demand, and the choice will be determined not only by the case as a whole, but by the demands of the different portions of the case.

For just as he will not speak in the same way when he is defending a client on a capital charge and when he is speaking in a lawsuit concerned with an inheritance, or discussing interdicts and suits taking the form of a wager, [*](cp. I. x. 5 and IV. ii. 61. Sponsio (= wager) was a form of lawsuit in which the litigant promised to pay a certain sum of money if he lost his case. The intrdiet was an order issued by the praetor commanding or prohibiting certain action. ) or claims in connexion with

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loans, so too he will preserve a due distinction between the speeches which he makes in the senate, before the people and in private consultations, while he will also introduce numerous modifications to suit the different persons and circumstances of time and place. Thus in one and the same speech he will use one style for stirring the emotions, and another to conciliate his hearers; it is from different sources that he will derive anger or pity, and the art which he employs in instructing the judge will be other than that which he employs to move him.

He will not maintain the same tone throughout his exordium, statement of fact, arguments, digression and peroration. He will speak gravely, severely, sharply, with vehemence, energy, fullness, bitterness, or geniality, quietly, simply, Hatteringly, gently, sweetly, briefy or wittily; he will not always be like himself, but he will never be unworthy of himself.

Thus the purpose for which oratory was above all designed will be secured, that is to say, he will speak with profit and with power to effect his aim, while he will also win the praise not merely of the learned, but of the multitude as well.

They make the gravest mistake who consider that the style which is best adapted to win popularity and applause is a faulty and corrupt style of speaking which revels in license of diction or wantons in childish epigram or swells with stilted bombast or riots in empty commonplace or adorns itself with blossoms of eloquence which will fall to earth if but lightly shaken, or regards extravagance as sublime or raves wildly under the pretext of free speech.

I am ready to admit that such qualities please many, and I feel no surprise that this should

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be the case. For any kind of eloquence is pleasing and attractive to the car, and every effort of the voice inspires a natural pleasure in the soul of man; indeed this is the sole cause of those familiar gatherings in the Forum or on the Old Wall, [*]( The agger of Servius Tullius, which served as a promenadec. The nearest modern parallel may be found in the Hyde Park orator. ) so that there is small reason for wonder if any pleader is safe to draw a ring of listeners from the crowd.

And when any unusually precious phrase strikes the ears of an uneducated audience, whatever its true merits, it wakens their admiration just for the very reason that they feel they could never have produced it themselves. And it deserves their admiration, since even such success is hard to attain. On the other hand, when such displays are compared with their betters, they sink into insignificance and fade out of sight, for they are like wool dyed red that pleases in the absence of purple, but, as Ovid [*](Halm. Am. 707 sqq. ) says, if compared with a cloak of Tyrian dye, pales in the presence of the fairer hue.

If, however, we test such corrupt eloquence by the touchstone of a critical taste, as, for example, we test inferior dyes with sulphur, it will lay aside the false brilliance that deceived the eye and fade to a pallor almost too repulsive to describe. Such passages shine only in the absence of the sunlight, just as certain tiny insects seem transformed in the darkness to little flames of fire. Finally, while many approve of things that are bad, no one disapproves of that which is good.

But the true orator will not merely be able to achieve all the feats of which I have spoken with supreme excellence, but with the utmost ease as well. For the sovereign power of eloquence and the voice that awakens well-deserved applause will

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be free from the perpetual distress of harassing anxiety which wastes and fevers the orator who painfully corrects himself and pines away over the laborious weighing and piecing together of his words.

No, our orator, brilliant, sublime and opulent of speech, is lord and master of all the resources of eloquence, whose affluence surrounds him. For he that has reached the summit has no more weary hills to scale. At first the climber's toil is hard, but the higher he mounts the easier becomes the gradient and the richer the soil.

And if by perseverance of study he pass even beyond these gentler slopes, fruits for which none have toiled thrust themselves upon him, and all things spring forth unbidden; and yet if they be not gathered daily, they will wither away. But even such wealth must observe the mean, without which nothing is either praiseworthy or beneficial, while brilliance must be attended by manliness, and imagination by soundness of taste.