Institutio Oratoria

Indeed if we place the task of praise and denunciation in the third division, on what kind of oratory are we to consider ourselves to be employed, when we complain, console, pacify, excite, terrify, encourage, instruct, explain obscurities, narrate, plead for mercy, thank, congratulate, reproach, abuse, describe, command, retract, express our desires and opinions, to mention no other of the many possibilities?

As an adherent of the older view I must ask for indulgence and must enquire what was the reason that led earlier writers to restrict a subject

For it was customary to write panegyrics and denunciations and to deliver funeral orations, while the greater part of their activities was devoted to the law-courts and deliberative assemblies; as a result, they say, the old writers of text-books only included those kinds of oratory which were most in vogue.

The defenders of antiquity point out that there are three kinds of audience: one which comes simply for the sake of getting pleasure, a second which meets to receive advice, a third to give judgement on causes. In the course of a thorough enquiry into the question it has occurred to me that the tasks of oratory must either be concerned with the law-courts or with themes lying outside the law-courts.