Institutio Oratoria

But,

a bad man will at times produce an exordium or a statement of facts, and will argue a case in a manner that leaves nothing to be desired.

As to the material of oratory, some have asserted that it is speech, as for instance Gorgias [*](Gorg. 449 E. ) in the dialogue of Plato. If this view be accepted in the sense that the word

speech

speech

Some say that political questions provide the material. The mistake made by these lies not in the quality of their opinion but in its limitation. For political questions are material for eloquence but not the only material.

Some, on the ground that rhetoric is a virtue, make the material with which it deals to be the whole of life. Others, on the ground that life regarded as a whole does not provide material for every virtue, since most of them are concerned only with departments of life (justice, courage and self-control each having their own duties and their own end), would consequently restrict oratory to one particular department of life and place it in the practical or pragmatic department of ethics, that is to say the department of morals which deals with the business of life.

For my own part, and I have authority to support me, I hold that the material of rhetoric is composed of everything that may be placed before it as a subject for speech. Plato, if I read him aright, makes Socrates [*](Gorg. 449 E. ) say to Gorgias that its material is to be

Cicero also in a passage [*](de Inv. i. 5. ) of one of his works, states that the material of rhetoric is composed of the things which are brought before it, but makes certain restrictions as to the nature of these things. In another passage, [*](de Or. I. vi. 21. I will not demand omniscience from an orator, although etc. ) however, he expresses his opinion that the orator has to speak about all kinds of things; I will quote his actual words:

although the very meaning of the name of orator and the fact that he professes to speak well seem to imply a promise and undertaking that the orator will speak with elegance and fullness on any subject that may be put before him.

And in another passage [*](ib. iii. xiv. 54. ) he says,

It is the duty of the true orator to seek out, hear, read, discuss, handle and ponder everything that befalls in the life of man, since it is with this that the orator is concerned and this that forms the material with which he has to deal.

But this material, as we call it, that is to say the things brought before it, has been criticised by some, at times on the ground that it is limitless, and sometimes on the ground that it is not peculiar to oratory, which they have therefore dubbed a discursive art, because all is grist that comes to its mill.

I have no serious quarrel with these critics, for they acknowledge that rhetoric is concerned with every kind of material, though they deny that it has any peculiar material just because of that material's multiplicity. But in spite of this multiplicity, rhetoric is not unlimited in scope, and there are other minor

As for sculpture, its activity extends to wood, ivory, marble, glass and precious stones in addition to the materials already mentioned.

And things which form the material for other artists, do not for that reason cease forthwith to be material for rhetoric. For if I ask what is the material of the sculptor, I shall be told bronze; and if I ask what is the material of the maker of vessels (I refer to the craft styled χαλκευτική by the Greeks), the answer will again be bronze: and yet there is all the difference in the world between vessels and statues.

Similarly medicine will not cease to be an art, because, like the art of the gymnast, it prescribes rubbing with oil and exercise, or because it deals with diet like the art of cookery.

Again, the objection that to discourse of what is good, expedient or just is the duty of philosophy presents no difficulty. For when such critics speak of a philosopher, they mean a good man. Why then should I feel surprised to find that the orator whom I identify with the good man deals with the same material?

There is all the less reason, since I have already shown in the first book [*]( Pref. § 10 sqq. ) that philosophers only usurped this department of knowledge after it had been abandoned by the orators: it was always the peculiar property of rhetoric and the philosophers are really trespassers. Finally, since the discussion of whatever is brought before it is the task of dialectic, which is really a concise form of oratory, why should not this task be regarded as also being the appropriate material for continuous oratory?

Well then, if an orator has to speak on every subject, he must be the master of all the arts.

In my opinion no one can be an absolutely perfect orator unless he has acquired a knowledge of all important subjects and arts.

For he cannot have a knowledge of all causes, and yet he should be able to speak on all. On what then will he speak? On those which he has studied. Similarly as regards the arts, he will study those concerning which he has to speak, as occasion may demand, and will speak on those which he has studied.

What then?—I am asked—will not a builder speak better on the subject of building and a musician on music? Certainly, if the orator does not know what is the question at issue. Even an illiterate peasant who is a party to a suit will speak better on behalf of his case than an orator who does not know what the subject in dispute may be. But on the other hand if the orator receive instruction from the builder or the musician, he will put forward what he has thus learned better than either, just as he will plead a case better than his client, once he has been instructed in it.