Institutio Oratoria

In support of this contention they adduce the fact that Demades was a waterman and Aeschines an actor, but both were orators. Their reasoning is false. For no man can be an orator untaught and it would be truer to say that these orators learned oratory late in life than that they never learned at all; although as a matter of fact Aeschines had an acquaintance with literature from childhood since his father was a teacher of literature, while as regards Demades, it is quite uncertain that he never studied rhetoric and in any case continuous practice in speaking was sufficient to bring him to such proficiency as he attained: for experience is the best of all schools.

On the other hand it may fairly be asserted that he would have achieved greater distinction, if he had received instruction: for although he delivered his speeches with great effect, he never ventured to write them for others.

Aristotle, it is true, in his Gryllus [*]( A lost treatise, named after Gryllus, the son of Xenophon. ) produces some tentative arguments to

Critolaus and Athenodorus of Rhodes have produced many arguments against this view, while Agnon renders himself suspect by the very title of his book in which he proclaims that he is going to indict rhetoric. As to the statements of Epicurus on this subject, they cause me no surprise, for he is the foe of all systematic training.

These gentlemen talk a great deal, but the arguments on which they base their statements are few. I will therefore select the most important of them and will deal with them briefly, to prevent the discussion lasting to all eternity.

Their first contention is based on the subject-matter; for they assert that all arts have their own subject-matter (which is true) and go on to say that rhetoric has none, which I shall show in what follows to be false.

Another slander is to the effect that no art will acquiesce in false opinions: since an art must be based on direct perception, which is always true: now, say they, rhetoric does give its assent to false conclusions and is therefore not an art.

I will admit that rhetoric sometimes substitutes falsehood for truth, but I will not allow that it does so because its opinions are false, since there is all the difference between holding a certain opinion oneself and persuading someone else to adopt an opinion. For instance a general frequently makes use of falsehood: Hannibal when hemmed in by Fabius persuaded his enemy that he was in retreat by

Again when the Spartan Theopompus changed clothes with his wife and escaped from custody disguised as a woman, he deceived his guards, but was not for a moment deceived as to his own identity. [*](Probably a king of Sparta, 770–720 B.C.) Similarly an orator, when he substitutes falsehood for the truth, is aware of the falsehood and of the fact that he is substituting it for the truth.

He therefore deceives others, but not himself. When Cicero boasted that he had thrown dust in the eyes of the jury in the case of Cluentius, he was far from being blinded himself. And when a painter by his artistic skill makes us believe that certain objects project from the picture, while others are withdrawn into the background, he knows perfectly well that they are really all in the same plane.