Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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.