Institutio Oratoria

I think I have now dealt with all the precepts of those who treat oratory as a mystery. But these rules still leave scope for free exercise of the judgment. For although I consider that there are occasions

when the orator may lawfully employ the syllogism, I am far from desiring him to make his whole speech consist of or even be crowded with a mass of epicheiremes and enthymemes. For a speech of that character would resemble dialogues and dialectical controversies rather than pleadings of the kind with which we are concerned, and there is an enormous difference between the two.