Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

No less care must be taken to avoid exciting any suspicion in this portion of our speech, and we should therefore give no hint of elaboration in the exordium, since any art that the orator may employ at this point seems to be directed solely at the judge.

But to avoid all display of art in itself requires consummate art: this admirable canon has been insisted on by all writers, though its force has been somewhat impaired by present conditions, since in certain trials, more especially those brought on capital charges or in the centumviral [*]( The court of the cettumviri was specially concerned with cases of inheritance. ) court, the judges themselves demand the most finished and

v4-6 p.39

elaborate speeches, think themselves insulted, unless the orator shows signs of having exercised the utmost diligence in the preparation of his speech, and desire not merely to be instructed, but to be charmed.

It is difficult to preserve the happy mean in carrying this precept into effect: but by a skilful compromise it will be possible to give the impression of speaking with care but without elaborate design. The old rule still holds good that no unusual word, no overbold metaphor, no phrase derived from the lumber-rooms of antiquity or from poetic licence should be detected in the exordium.