Institutio Oratoria

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.

The nature of the questions into which enquiry is made in the courts is obvious. As regards those matters which do not come before a judge, they must necessarily be concerned either with the past or the future. We praise or denounce past actions, we deliberate about the future.

Again everything on which we have to speak must be either certain or doubtful. We praise or blame what is certain, as our inclination leads us: on the other hand where doubt exists, in some cases we are free to form our own views, and it is here that deliberation comes in, while in others, we leave the problem to the decision of others, and it is on these that litigation takes place.

Anaximenes regarded forensic and public oratory as genera but held that there were seven species :— exhortation, dissuasion, praise, denunciation,