Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

is the emotion to be shown when we ask pardon for the errors of the young, or apologise for some youthful amour. Sometimes again gentle raillery of another's passion may derive its tone from ethos, though only to a partial extent. More closely dependent on ethos are the skilful exercise of feigned emotion or the employment of irony in making apologies or asking questions, irony being the term which is applied to words which mean something other than they seem to express.

From the same source springs also that

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more powerful method of exciting hatred, when by a feigned submission to our opponents we pass silent censure on their violence. For the very fact of our yielding serves to demonstrate their insupportable arrogance, while orators who have a passion for abuse or are given to affect freedom of speech fail to realise that it is a far more effective course to make your antagonist unpopular than to abuse him. For the former course makes our antagonists disliked, the latter ourselves.

The emotion of love and longing for our friends and connexions is perhaps of an intermediate character, being stronger than ethos and weaker than pathos. There is also good reason for giving the name of ethos to those scholastic exercises [*](cp. I. ix. 3. ) in which we portray rustics, misers, cowards and superstitious persons according as our theme may require. For if ethos denotes moral character, our speech must necessarily be based on ethos when it is engaged in portraying such character.

Finally ethos in all its forms requires the speaker to be a man of good character and courtesy. For it is most important that he should himself possess or be thought to possess those virtues for the possession of which it is his duty, if possible, to commend his client as well, while the excellence of his own character will make his pleading all the more convincing and will be of the utmost service to the cases which he undertakes. For the orator who gives the impression of being a bad man while he is speaking, is actually speaking badly, since his words seem to be insincere owing to the absence of ethos which would otherwise have revealed itself.

Consequently the style of oratory employed in such cases should be calm and mild with no trace of pride, elevation or

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sublimity, all of which would be out of place. It is enough to speak appropriately, pleasantly and persuasively, and therefore the intermediate [*]( i.e. the style intermediate between the restrained (Attic) and the grand (Asiatic) style. ) style of oratory is most suitable.

The pathos of the Greeks, which we correctly translate by emotion, is of a different character, and I cannot better indicate the nature of the difference than by saying that ethos rather resembles comedy and pathos tragedy. For pathos is almost entirely concerned with anger, dislike, fear, hatred and pity. It will be obvious to all what topics are appropriate to such appeals and I have already spoken on the subject in discussing the exordium and the peroration. [*](IV. i and VI. i.)

I wish however to point out that fear is of two kinds, that which we feel and that which we cause in others. Similarly there are two kinds of invidia (hatred, envy), to which the two adjectives invidus (envious) and invidious (invidious, hateful) correspond. The first supplies an epithet for persons, the second for things, and it is in this latter connexion that the orator's task is even more onerous. For though some things are hateful in themselves such as parricide, murder, poisoning, other things have to be made to seem hateful.

This latter contingency arises when we attempt to shew that what we have suffered is of a more horrible nature than what are usually regarded as great evils. Vergil will provide an example in the lines [*](Aen. iii. 321. ) :—

blest beyond all maidens Priam's child,
Beneath Troy's lofty bulwarks doomed to die
Upon the tomb of him that was thy foe.

For how wretched was the lot of Andromache, if Polyxena be accounted happy in comparison with

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her!

Again the same problem arises when we endeavour to magnify our wrongs by saying that other far lesser ills are intolerable; e.g.

If you had merely struck him, your conduct would have been indefensible. But you did more, you wounded him.

However I will deal with this subject more fully when I come to speak of amplification. [*](viii. iv. 9.) Meanwhile I will content myself with the observation that the aim of appeals to the emotion is not merely to slew the bitter and grievous nature of ills that actually are so, but also to make ills which are usually regarded as tolerable seem unendurable, as for instance when we represent insulting words as inflicting more grievous injury than an actual blow or represent disgrace as being worse than death.

For the force of eloquence is such that it not merely compels the judge to the conclusion toward which the nature of the facts lead him, but awakens emotions which either do not naturally arise from the case or are stronger than the case would suggest. This is known as deriosis, [*]( Lit. making terrible. ) that is to say, language giving additional force to things unjust, cruel or hateful, an accomplishment in which Demosthenes created immense and special effect.

If I thought it sufficient to follow traditional rules, I should regard it as adequate treatment for this topic to omit nothing that I have read or been taught, provided that it be reasonably sound. But my design is to bring to light the secret principles of this art, and to open up the inmost recesses of the subject, giving the result not of teaching received from others, but of my own experience and the guidance of nature herself.