Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

But all these perils may be boldly faced by those who have no difficulty in changing their line of pleading. Those however who cannot get away from what they have written, are reduced to silence by such emergencies or else led into making false statements, as for instance if an advocate should say,

He stretches out suppliant hands to embrace your knees,

The unhappy man is locked in the embrace of his children,

See he recalls me to the point,

although the person in question is doing none of these things.

Such faults are due to the practice of the schools, where we are free to feign what we will with impunity, because we are at liberty to invent facts. But this is impossible when we are confronted with realities, and it was an excellent remark that Cassius made to a young orator who said,

Why do you look so fiercely at me, Severus?

To which he replied,

I was doing nothing of the kind, but if it is in your manuscript, here you are!

And he fixed his eyes on him with the most ferocious scowl that he could muster.

There is one point which it is specially important to

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remember, that we should never attempt to move our audience to tears without drawing on all the resources of our eloquence. For while this form of emotional appeal is the most effective of all, when successful, its failure results in anti-climax, and if the pleader is a feeble speaker he would have been wiser to leave the pathos of the situation to the imagination of the judges.

For look and voice and even the expression on the face of the accused to which the attention of the court is drawn will generally awaken laughter where they fail to awaken compassion. Therefore the pleader must measure and make a careful estimate of his powers, and must have a just comprehension of the difficulty of the task which he contemplates. For there is no halfway house in such matters between tears and laughter.