Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

as the man did who asked a witness, who alleged that lie had been wounded by the accused, whether he had any scar to show for it. The witness proceeded to show a huge scar on his thigh, on which lie remarked,

I wish he had wounded you in the side.
[*](ac. because then he would have killed you. ) A happy use may also be made of insult. Hispo, for example, when the accuser charged him with scandalous crimes, replied,
You judge my character by your own
; while Fulvius Propinquus, when asked by the representative of the emperor whether the documents which he produced were autographs, replied,
Yes, Sir, and the handwriting is genuine, too!
[*]( Presumably the legatus had been suspected of forgery. )

Such I have either learned from others or discovered from my own experience to be the commonest sources of humour. But I must repeat that the number of ways in which one may speak wittily are of no less infinite variety than those in which one may speak seriously, for they depend on persons, place, time and chances, which are numberless.

I have, therefore, touched on the topics of humour that I may not be taxed with having omitted them; but with regard to my remarks on the actual practice and manner of jesting, I venture to assert that they are absolutely indispensable. To these Domitius Marsus, who wrote an elaborate treatise on Urbanity, adds several types of saying, which are not laughable, but rather elegant sayings with a certain charm and attraction of their own, which are suitable even to speeches of the most serious kind: they are characterized by a certain urbane wit, but not of a kind to raise a laugh.

And

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as a matter of fact his work was not designed to deal with humour, but with urbane wit, a quality which he regards as peculiar to this city, though it was not till a late period that it was understood in this sense, after the word Urbs had come to be accepted as indicating Rome without the addition of any proper noun. He defines it as follows:

Urbanity is a certain quality of language compressed into the limits of a brief saying and adapted to delight and move men to every kind of emotion, but specially suitable to resistance or attack according as the person or circumstances concerned may demand.
But this definition, if we except the quality of brevity, includes all the virtues of oratory. For it is entirely concerned with persons and things to deal with which in appropriate language is nothing more nor less than the task of perfect eloquence. Why he insisted on brevity being essential I do not know,

since in the same book he asserts that many speakers have revealed their urbanity in narrative. And a little later he gives the following definition, which is, as he says, based on the views expressed by Cato:

Urbanity is the characteristic of a man who has produced many good sayings and replies, and who, whether in conversation, in social or convivial gatherings, in public speeches, or under any other circumstances, will speak with humour and appropriateness. If any orator do this, he will undoubtedly succeed in making his audience laugh.

But if we accept these definitions, we shall have to allow the title of urbane to anything that is well said. It was natural therefore that the author of this definition should classify such sayings under three heads, serious, humorous and intermediate, since all good

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sayings may be thus classified. But, in my opinion, there are certain forms of humorous saying that may be regarded as not possessing sufficient urbanity.

For to my thinking urbanity involves the total absence of all that is incongruous, coarse, unpolished and exotic whether in thought, language, voice or gesture, and resides not so much in isolated sayings as in the whole complexion of our language, just as for the Greeks Atticism means that elegance of taste which was peculiar to Athens.

However, out of respect to the judgment of Marsus, who was a man of the greatest learning, I will add that he divides serious utterances into three classes, the honorific, the derogatory and the intermediate. As an example of the honorific he quotes the words uttered by Cicero in the pro Ligario [*](xii. 35.) with reference to Caesar,

You who forget nothing save injuries.