Institutio Oratoria

However, to return to the point from which I had digressed. Written narratives should be composed with the utmost care. It is useful at first, when a child has just begun to speak, to make him repeat what he has heard with a view to improving his powers of speech; and for the same purpose, and with good reason, I would make him tell his story from the end back to the beginning or start in the middle and go backwards or forwards, but only so long as he is at his teacher's knee and while he is incapable of greater effort and is beginning to connect words and things, thereby strengthening the memory. Even so when he is beginning to understand the nature of correct and accurate speech, extempore effusions, improvised without waiting for thought to supply the matter or a moment's

Such proceedings fill ignorant parents with senseless pride, while the boys themselves lose all respect for their work, adopt a conceited bearing, and acquire the habit of speaking in the worst style and actually practising their faults, while they develop an arrogant conviction of their own talents which often proves fatal even to the most genuine proficiency.

There will be a special time for acquiring fluency of speech and I shall not pass the subject by unnoticed. For the meantime it will suffice if a boy, by dint of taking pains and working as hard as his age will permit, manages to produce something worthy of approval. Let him get used to this until it becomes a second nature. It is only he who learns to speak correctly before he can speak with rapidity who will reach the heights that are our goal or the levels immediately below them.

To narratives is annexed the task of refuting and confirming them, styled anaskeue and kataskeue, from which no little advantage may be derived. This may be done not merely in connexion with fiction and stories transmitted by the poets, but with the actual records of history as well. For instance we may discuss the credibility of the story that a raven settled on the head of Valerius in the midst of a combat and with its wings and beak struck the eyes of the Gaul who was his adversary, and a quantity of arguments may be produced on either side:

or we may discuss the tradition that Scipio [*](See Aul. Gell. VII. i.) was begotten by a serpent, or that Romulus was suckled by the she-wolf, or the story of Numa and Egeria. As regards Greek history, it allows itself something very like poetic

From this our pupil will begin to proceed to more important themes, such as the praise of famous men and the denunciation of the wicked. Such tasks are profitable in more than one respect. The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice. Further wide knowledge of facts is thus acquired, from which examples may be drawn if circumstances so demand, such illustrations being of the utmost value in every kind of case.

It is but a step from this to practice in the comparison of the respective merits of two characters. This is of course a very similar theme to the preceding, but involves a duplication of the subject matter and deals not merely with the nature of virtues and vices, but with their degree as well. But the method to be followed in panegyric and invective will be dealt with in its proper place, as it forms the third department of rhetoric. [*](Book III. chap. vii.)

As to commonplaces (I refer to those in which we denounce vices themselves such as adultery, gambling or profligacy without attacking particular persons), they come straight from the courts and, if we add the name of the defendant, amount to actual accusations. As a rule, however, the general character of a commonplace is usually given a special turn: for instance we make our adulterer blind, our gambler poor and our profligate far advanced in years. Sometimes too they entail

for we may speak on behalf of luxury or love, while a pimp or a parasite may be defended in such a way that we appeal as counsel not for the character itself, but to rebut some specific charge that is brought against him.

Theses on the other hand are concerned with the comparison of things and involve questions such as

Which is preferable, town or country life?

Which deserves the greatest praise, the lawyer or the soldier?

Other theses too belong entirely to the deliberative class of oratory, as for instance the questions as to

Whether marriage is desirable

Whether a public career is a proper object of ambition.

My own teachers used to prepare us for conjectural cases by a form of exercise which was at once useful and attractive: they made us discuss and develop questions such as

Why in Sparta is Venus represented as wearing armour?

Why is Cupid believed to be a winged boy armed with arrows and a torch?

That certain topics such as the question as to

This practice— for I am not going to postpone expressing my judgment on it—I used to regard a confession of extreme weakness. For how can such men find appropriate arguments in the course of actual cases which continually present new and different features? How can they answer the points that their opponents may bring up? how deal a rapid counterstroke in debate or cross-examine a witness? if, even in those matters which are of common occurrence and crop up in the majority of cases, they cannot give expression to the most familiar thoughts except in words prepared so far in advance.

And when they produce the same passage in a number of different cases, they must come to loathe it like food that has grown cold or stale, and they can hardly avoid a feeling of shame at displaying this miserable piece of furniture to an audience whose memory must have detected it so many times already: like the furniture of the ostentatious poor, it is sure to shew signs of wear through being used for such a variety of different purposes.

Also it must be remembered that there is hardly a single commonplace of such universal application that it will fit any actual case, unless some special link is provided to connect it with

either because it is out of keeping with the circumstances or like most of its kind is inappropriately employed not because it is wanted, but because it is ready for use. Some speakers, for example, introduce the most long-winded commonplaces just for the sake of the sentiments they contain, whereas rightly the sentiments should spring from the context.

Such disquisitions are at once ornamental and useful, only if they arise from the nature of the case. But the most finished eloquence, unless it tend to the winning of the case, is to say the least superfluous and may even defeat its own purpose. However I must bring this digression to a close.

The praise or denunciation of laws requires greater powers; indeed they should almost be equal to the most serious tasks of rhetoric. The answer to the question as to whether this exercise is more nearly related to deliberative or controversial oratory depends on custom and law and consequently varies in different states. Among the Greeks the proposer of a law was called upon to set forth his case before a judge, [*](i.e. a court of nomothetae appointed by the Athenian assembly, who examined the provisions of the proposed law. ) while in Rome it was the custom to urge the acceptance or rejection of a law before the public assembly. But in any case the arguments advanced in such cases are few in number and of a definite type. For there are only three kinds of law, sacred, public and private.

This division is of rhetorical value chiefly when a law is to be praised. For example the orator may advance from praise to praise by a series of gradations, praising an enactment first because it is law, secondly because it is public, and, finally, designed for the support of religion. As regards the questions