Institutio Oratoria

It is a great gift to be able to set forth the facts on which we are speaking clearly and vividly. For oratory fails of its full effect, and does not assert itself as it should, if its appeal is merely to the hearing, and if the judge merely feels that the facts on which he has to give his decision are being narrated to him, and not displayed in their living truth to the eyes of the mind.

But since different views have been held with regard to this art of representation, I shall not attempt to divide it into

1. Forthwith each hero tiptoe stood erect. [*](Aen. v. 426. )

Cicero is supreme in this department, as in others. Is there anybody so incapable of forming a mental picture of a scene that, when he reads the following passage from the Verrines, [*](v. xxxiii. 86.) he does not seem not merely to see the actors in the scene, the place itself and their very dress, but even to imagine to himself other details that the orator does not describe?

There on the shore stood the praetor, the representative of the Roman people, with slippered feet, robed in a purple cloak, a tunic streaming to his heels, and leaning on the arm of this worthless woman.

For my own part, I seem to see before my eyes his face, his eyes, the unseemly blandishments of himself and his paramour, the silent loathing and frightened shame of those who viewed the scene.

At times, again, the picture which we endeavour to present is fuller in detail, as, for example, in the following description of a luxurious banquet, which is also from Cicero, [*]( From the lost pro Gallio. ) since he by himself is capable of supplying admirable examples of every kind of oratorical ornament:

I seemed to see some entering, some leaving the room,

v7-9 p.249

some reeling under the influence of the wine, others yawning with yesterday's potations. The floor was foul with wine-smears, covered with wreaths half-withered and littered with fishbones.

What more would any man have seen who had actually entered the room? So, too, we may move our hearers to tears by the picture of a captured town. For the mere statement that the town was stormed, while no doubt it embraces all that such a calamity involves, has all the curtness of a dispatch, and fails to penetrate to the emotions of the hearer.

But if we expand all that the one word

stormed

Then will come the pillage of treasure sacred and profane, the hurrying to and fro of the plunderers as they carry off their booty or return to seek for more, the prisoners driven each before his own inhuman captor, the mother struggling to keep her child, and the victors fighting over the richest of the spoil. For though, as I have already said, the sack of a city includes all these things, it is less effective to tell the whole news at once than to recount it detail by detail.

And we shall secure the vividness we seek, if only our descriptions give the impression of truth, nay, we may even add fictitious incidents of the type which commonly occur. The same vivid impression may be produced

1. Chill shudderings shake my limbs
2. And all my blood is curdled cold with fear;

Aen. iii. 29

1. And trembling mothers clasped
2. Their children to their breast.

Aen. vii. 518.

in my opinion, the highest of all oratorical gifts, it is far from difficult of attainment. Fix your eyes on nature and follow her. All eloquence is concerned with the activities of life, while every man applies to himself what he hears from others, and the mind is always readiest to accept what it recognises to be true to nature.

The invention of similes has also provided an admirable means of illuminating our descriptions. Some of these are designed for insertion among our arguments to help our proof, while others are devised to make our pictures yet more vivid; it is with this latter class of simile that I am now specially concerned. The following are good examples:—

1. Thence like fierce wolves beneath the cloud of night,

Aen. ii. 355.

1. Like the bird that flies
2. Around the shore and the fish-haunted reef,
3. Skimming the deep.

Aen. iv. 254.

In employing this form of ornament we must be especially careful that the subject chosen for our simile is neither obscure nor unfamiliar: for anything that is selected for the purpose of illuminating

1. As when Apollo wintry Lycia leaves,
2. And Xanthus' streams, or visits Delos' isle,
3. His mother's home,

Aen. iv. 143.

But even the type of simile which I discussed in connexion with arguments [*]( xi. 22. ) is an ornament to oratory, and serves to make it sublime, rich, attractive or striking, as the case may be. For the more remote the simile is from the subject to which it is applied, the greater will be the impression of novelty and the unexpected which it produces.

The following type may be regarded as commonplace and useful only as helping to create an impression of sincerity:

As the soil is improved and rendered more fertile by culture, so is the mind by education,

As physicians amputate mortified limbs, so must we lop away foul and dangerous criminals, even though they be bound to us by ties of blood.

Rock and deserts reply to the voice of man, savage beasts are oft-times tamed by the power of music and stay their onslaught,

This type of simile has, however, sadly degenerated in the hands of some of our declaimers owing to the license of the schools. For they adopt false comparisons, and even then do not apply them as they should to the subjects to which they wish them to provide a parallel. Both these faults are exemplified in two similes which were on the lips of everyone

Even the sources of mighty rivers are navigable,

The generous tree bears fruit while it is yet a sapling.