Institutio Oratoria

For the same reason the uninstructed sometimes appear to have a richer flow of language, because they say everything that can be said, while the learned exercise discrimination and self-restraint. To this must be added the fact that such persons take no trouble to prove their contentions, and consequently steer clear of the chilly reception given in our decadent law-courts to arguments and

Again, their epigrams, the sole objects of their quest, seem all the more striking because of the dreariness and squalor of their context, since flashes are more clearly seen against a background, not of mere

shade,

None the less it must be confessed that learning does take something from oratory, just as the file takes something from rough surfaces or the whetstone from blunt edges or age from wine; it takes away defects, and if the results produced after subjection to the polish of literary study are less, they are less only because they are better.

But these creatures have another weapon in their armoury: they seek to obtain the reputation of speaking with greater vigour than the trained orator by means of their delivery. For they shout on all and every occasion and bellow their every utterance

with uplifted hand,

Smite your hands together, stamp the ground, slap your thigh, your breast, your forehead, and you will go straight to the heart of the dingier members of your audience. [*](pullatus = wearing dark clothes, i.e. the common people, as opposed to the upper classes wearing the white or purple bordered toga. ) But the educated speaker, just as he knows how to moderate his style, and to impart variety and artistic form to his speech, is an equal adept in the matter of delivery and will suit his action to the tone of each

But the ranters confer the title of force on that which is really violence. You may also occasionally find not merely pleaders, but, what is far more shameful, teachers as well, who, after a brief training in the art of speaking, throw method to the winds and, yielding to the impulse of the moment, run riot in every direction, abusing those who hold literature in higher respect as fools without life, courage or vigour, and calling them the first and worst name that occurs to them.

Still let me congratulate these gentlemen on attaining eloquence without industry, method or study. As for myself I have long since retired from the task of teaching in the schools and of speaking in the courts, thinking it the most honourable conclusion to retire while my services were still in request, and all I ask is to be allowed to console my leisure by making such researches and composing such instructions as will, I hope, prove useful to young men of ability, and are, at any rate, a pleasure to myself.

Let no one however demand from me a rigid code of rules such as most authors of textbooks have laid down, or ask me to impose on students of rhetoric a system of laws immutable as fate, a system in which injunctions as to the exordium and its nature lead the way; then come the statement of facts and the laws to be observed in this connexion: next the proposition or, as some prefer, the digression, followed by prescriptions as to the order in which the various questions should be discussed, with all the other rules, which some speakers follow as though they had no

If the whole of rhetoric could be thus embodied in one compact code, it would be an easy task of little compass: but most rules are liable to be altered by the nature of the case, circumstances of time and place, and by hard necessity itself. Consequently the all-important gift for an orator is a wise adaptability since he is called upon to meet the most varied emergencies.

What if you should instruct a general, as often as he marshals his troops for battle, to draw up his front in line, advance his wings to left and right, and station his cavalry to protect his flank? This will perhaps be the best plan, if circumstances allow. But it may have to be modified owing to the nature of the ground, if, for instance, he is confronted by a mountain, if a river bars his advance, or his movements are hampered by hills, woods or broken country.

Or again it may be modified by the character of the enemy or the nature of the crisis by which he is faced. On one occasion he will fight in line, on another in column, on one he will use his auxiliary troops, on another his legionaries; while occasionally a feint of flight may win the day. So, too, with the rules of oratory.

Is the exordium necessary or superfluous? should it be long or short? addressed entirely to the judge or sometimes directed to some other quarter by the employment of some figure of speech? [*](i.e. by the figure known as apostrophe, in which the orator diverts his speech from the judge to some other person: see IX. ii. 38. ) Should the statement of facts be concise or developed at some length? continuous or divided into sections? and should it follow the actual or an artificial order of events? The orator will find the answers to all these questions in the circumstances of the case. So, too, with the order in which questions should be discussed,

while their opponents would be best suited by another. For these rules have not the formal authority of laws or decrees of the plebs, but are, with all they contain, the children of expediency.

I will not deny that it is generally expedient to conform to such rules, otherwise I should not be writing now; but if our friend expediency suggests some other course to us, why, we shall disregard the authority of the professors and follow her.

For my part above all things

1. This I enjoin and urge and urge anew

Verg. Aen. iii. 436.