Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

The statement of facts will be brief, if in the first place we start at that point of the case at which it begins to concern the judge, secondly avoid irrelevance, and finally cut out everything the removal of which neither hampers the activities of the judge nor harms our own case.

For frequently conciseness of detail is not inconsistent with length in the whole. Take for instance such a statement as the following:

I came to the harbour, I saw a ship, I asked the cost of a passage, the price was agreed, I went on board, the anchor was weighed, we loosed our cable and set out.

Nothing could be terser than these assertions, but it would have been quite sufficient to say

I sailed from the harbour.

And whenever the conclusion gives a sufficiently clear idea of the premisses, we must be content with having given a hint which will enable our audience to understand what we have left unsaid.