Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

For my part I would not have anything done dishonourably. But for the meantime let us regard these questions as at least belonging to the rhetorical exercises of the schools: for knowledge of evil is necessary to enable us the better to defend what is right.

For the present I will only say that if anyone is going to urge a dishonourable course on honourable man, he should remember not to urge it as being dishonourable, and should avoid the practice of certain declaimers who urge Sextus Pompeius to piracy just because it is dishonourable and cruel. Even when we address bad men, we should gloss over what is unsightly. For there is no man so evil as to wish to seem so.

Thus Sallust makes Catiline [*](Cat. xx. ) speak as one who is driven to crime not by wickedness but by indignation, and Varius makes Atreus say:

  1. My wrongs are past all speech,
  2. And such shall be the deeds they force me to.
How much more has this pretence of honour to be kept up by those who have a real regard for their own good name!