Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
When the tops of my olive trees rise too high, I lop them away, with the result that their growth expands laterally
In fact true beauty and usefulness always go hand in hand. It does not, however, require any special ability to discern the truth of this. It is more important to note that such seemly ornament must be varied to suit the nature of the material to which it is applied. To begin with the primary classification of oratory, the same form of ornament will not suit demonstrative, deliberative and forensic speeches. For the oratory of display aims solely at delighting the audience, and therefore develops all the resources of eloquence and deploys all its ornament, since it seeks not to steal its way into the mind nor to wrest the victory from its opponent, but aims solely at honour and glory.
Consequently the orator, like the hawker who displays his wares, will set forth before his audience for their inspection, nay, almost for their handling, all his most attractive reflexions, all the brilliance that language and the charm that figures can supply, together with all the magnificence of metaphor and the elaborate art of composition that is at his disposal. For his success concerns himself, and not his cause.
But when it is a question of facts, and he is confronted by the hard realities of battle, his last thought will be for his personal glory. Nay, it is even unseemly to trouble overmuch about words when the greatest interests are at stake. I would
For whereas in deliberative oratory the senate demand a certain loftiness and the people a certain impetuosity of eloquence, the public cases of the courts and those involving capital punishment demand a more exact style. On the other hand, in private deliberations and lawsuits about trifling sums of money (and there are not a few of these) it is more appropriate to employ simple and apparently unstudied language. For we should be ashamed to demand the repayment of a loan in rolling periods, or to display poignant emotion in a case concerned with water-droppings, or to work ourselves into a perspiration over the return of a slave to the vendor. But I am wandering from the point.
Since rhetorical ornament, like clearness, may reside either in individual words or groups of words, we must consider the requirements of both cases. For although tile canon, that clearness mainly requires propriety of language and ornament the skilful use of metaphor, is perfectly sound, it is desirable that we should realise that without propriety ornament is impossible.
But as several words may often have the same meaning (they are called synonyms), some will be more distinguished, sublime, brilliant, attractive or euphonious than others. For as those syllables are the most pleasing to the ear which are composed of the more euphonious letters, thus words composed of such syllables will sound better than others, and the more vowel sounds they contain the more attractive they will be to hear.
But words require to be used in different ways. For example, horrible things are best described by words that are actually harsh to the ear. But as a general rule it may be laid down that the best words, considered individually, are those which are fullest or most agreeable in sound. Again, elegant words are always to be preferred to those which are coarse, and there is no room for low words in the speech of a cultivated man.
The choice of striking or sublime words will be determined by the matter in hand; for a word that in one context is magnificent may be turgid in another, and words which are all too mean to describe great things may be suitable enough when applied to subjects of less importance. And just as a mean word embedded in a brilliant passage attracts special attention, like a spot on a bright surface, so if our style be of a plain character, sublime and brilliant words will seem incongruous and tasteless excrescences on a flat surface.
In some cases instinct, and not reason, must supply the touchstone, as, for example, in the line: [*](Aen. viii. 641. )
Here the poet, by inventing the word porca, succeeded in producing an elegant impression, whereas if lie had used the masculine porcuis, the very reverse would have been the case. In some cases, however, the incongruity is obvious enough. It was only the other day that we laughed with good reason at the poet who wrote:
- A sow was slain to ratify their pacts.
- The youngling mice had gnawed
- Within its chest the purple-bordered gown.
[*]( Camillus originally means a young boy. )
On the other hand, we admire Virgil [*](Georg. i. 181. ) when he says:
For here the epithet is appropriate and prevents our expecting too much, while the use of the singular instead of the plural, and the unusual monosyllabic conclusion of the line, both add to the pleasing effect. Horace [*](A. P. 139. ) accordingly imitated Virgil in both these points, when he wrote,
- The fruit shall be a paltry mouse.
Again, our style need not always dwell on the heights: at times it is desirable that it should sink. For there are occasions when the very meanness of the words employed adds force to what we say. When Cicero, in his denunciation of Piso, [*](Fr. 100. ) says,
When your whole family rolls up in a dray,do you think that his use of the word dray was accidental, and was not designedly used to increase his audience's contempt for the man he wished to bring to ruin? The same is true when he says elsewhere,
You put down your head and butt him.
This device may also serve to carry off a jest, as in the passage of Cicero where he talks of the
little sprat of a boy who slept with his elder sister,[*](pro. Cael. xv. 36. ) or where he speaks of
Flavius, who put out the eyes of crows,[*](pro Mil. xi. 25. Our equivalent is catch a weasel asleep. ) or, again, in the pro Milone, [*](pro Mil. xxii. 60. Rufio, a slave name = red head. ) cries,
Hi, there! Rufio!and talks of
Erucius Antoniaster.[*]( From the lost pro Vareno. Erucius, Antonius' ape. ) On the other hand, this practice becomes more obtrusive when employed in the schools, like the phrase that was so much praised in my boyhood,
Give your father bread,or in the same declamation,
You feed even your dog.[*]( A declamation turning on the law that sons must support their parents. ) But such tricks do not always come off,
especially in
Words are proper, newly-coined or metaphorical. In the case of proper words there is a special dignity conferred by antiquity, since old words, which not everyone would think of using, give our style a venerable and majestic air: this is a form of ornament of which Virgil, with his perfect taste, has made unique use.
For his employment of words such as olli, [*]( Archaic for illi. ) quianam, [*](Because.) moerus, [*]( Archaic for murus (Aen. x. 24.). ) pone [*](Behind.) and pellacia [*]( Deceitfulness ( Aen. ii. 90). ) gives his work that impressive air of antiquity which is so attractive in pictures, but which no art of man can counterfeit. But we must not overdo it, and such words must not be dragged out from the deepest darkness of the past. Quaeso is old enough: what need for us to say quaiso? [*](quaeso = pray, oppido quite, exactly. ) Oppido was still used by my older contemporaries, but I fear that no one would tolerate it now. At any rate, antegerio, [*](Quite, very.) which means the same, would certainly never be used by anyone who was not possessed with a passion for notoriety.
What need have we of acrumnosum? [*](Wretched.) It is surely enough to call a thing horridum. Reor may be tolerated, autumo [*](Assert.) smacks of tragedy, proles [*](Offspring.) has become a rarity, while prosapia [*](Stock, family.) stamps the man who uses it as lacking taste. Need I say more Almost the whole language has changed.
But there are still some old words that are endeared to us by
This was a certain Cimber who killed his brother,
- Britain's Thucydides, whose mad Attic brain
- Loved word-amalgams like Corinthian bronze,
- First made a horrid blend of words from Gaul,
- Tau, al, min, sil and God knows how much else,
- Then mixed them in a potion for his brother!
a fact which Cicero recorded in the words,
Cimber has killed his brother German.[*](Phil. XI. vi. 14. A pun on the two meanings of gemanus, brother and German. ) The epigram against Sallust is scarcely less well known:
- Crispus, you, too, Jugurtha's fall who told,
- And filched such store of words from Cato old.
It is a tiresome kind of affectation; any one can practise it, and it is made all the worse by the fact that the man who catches the infection will not choose his words to suit his facts, but will drag in irrelevant facts to provide an opportunity for the use of such words. The coining of new words is, as I stated in the first book, [*](I. v. 70) more permissible in Greek, for the Greeks did not hesitate to coin nouns to represent certain sounds and emotions, and in truth they were taking no greater liberty than was taken by the first men when they gave names to things.