Institutio Oratoria

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. ) :—

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

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.