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 then the judge seems no longer to be listening to a voice bewailing another's ills, but to hear the voice and feelings of the unhappy victims, men whose appearance alone would call forth his tears even though they uttered never a word. And as their plea would awaken yet greater pity if they urged it with their own lips, so it is rendered to some extent all the more effective when it is, as it were, put into their mouth by their advocate: we may draw a parallel from the stage,

v4-6 p.401
where the actor's voice and delivery produce greater emotional effect when he is speaking in an assumed role than when he speaks in his own character. Consequently Cicero, to quote him once again,

although he will not put entreaties into Milo's mouth, and prefers to commend him by his staunchness of character, still lends him words in the form of such complaint as may become a brave man. [*](pro Mil. xxxiv. 94. )

Alas!
he says,
my labours have been in vain! Alas for my blighted hopes! Alas for my baffled purpose!
Appeals to pity should, however, always be brief, and there is good reason for the saying that nothing dries so quickly as tears. [*]( A quotation from the rhetorician Apollonius, cp. Cic. de. Inv. i. 56. )

Time assuages even genuine grief, and it is therefore inevitable that the semblance of grief portrayed in our speech should vanish yet more rapidly. And if we spend too much time over such portrayal our hearer grows weary of his tears, takes a breathing space, and returns once more to the rational attitude from which lie has been distracted by the impulse of the moment.

We must not, therefore, allow the effect which we have produced to fall flat, and must consequently abandon our appeal to the emotion just when that emotion is at its height, nor must we expect anyone to weep for long over another's ills. For this reason our eloquence ought to be pitched higher in this portion of our speech than in any other, since, wherever it fails to add something to what has preceded, it seems even to diminish its previous effect, while a diminuendo is merely a step towards the rapid disappearance of the emotion.