Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
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.
Actions as well as words may be employed to move the court to tears. Hence the custom of
The impression produced by such exhibitions is generally enormous, since they seem to bring the spectators face to face with the cruel facts. For example, the sight of the bloodstains on the purple-bordered toga of Gaius Caesar, which was carried at the head of his funeral procession, aroused the Roman people to fury. They knew that he had been killed; they had even seen his body stretched upon the bier: but his garment, still wet with his blood, brought such a vivid image of the crime before their minds, that Caesar seemed not to have been murdered, but to be being murdered before their very eyes.
Still I would not for this reason go so far as to approve a practice of which I have read, and which indeed I have occasionally witnessed, of bringing into court a picture of the crime painted on wood or canvas, that the judge might be stirred to fury by the horror of the sight. For the pleader who prefers a voiceless picture to speak for him in place of his own eloquence must be singularly incompetent.
On the other hand, I know that the wearing of mourning and the presentation of an unkempt appearance, and the introduction of relatives similarly arrayed, has proved of value, and that entreaties have been of great service to save the accused from condemnation. The practice therefore of appealing to the judges by all that is near and dear to them will be