Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Cicero [*](' Pro Lig. xii. 38. ) again gives the general statement a personal turn when he says:

Caesar, the splendour of your present fortune confers on you nothing greater than the power and nothing better than the will to save as many of your fellow-citizens as possible.

For here he attributes to Caesar what was really attributable to the circumstances of his power. In this class of reflexion we must be careful, as always, not to employ them too frequently, nor at random, nor place them in the mouth of every kind of person,

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while we must make certain that they are not untrue, as is so often the case with those speakers who style them reflexions of universal application and recklessly employ whatever seems to support their case as though its truth were beyond question.

Such reflexions are best suited to those speakers whose authority is such that their character itself will lend weight to their words. For who would tolerate a boy, or a youth, or even a man of low birth who presumed to speak with all the authority of a judge and to thrust his precepts down our throats?

The term enthymeme may be applied to any concept of the mind, but in its strict sense means a reflexion drawn from contraries. Consequently, it has a supremacy among reflexions which we may compare to that of Homer among poets and Rome among cities.

I have already said enough on this topic in dealing with arguments. [*]( See v. x. 2, and again, for greater detail, v. xiv. 1 (note at end), where an example of this type of sententia is given from the pro Milone (ch. 29) You are sitting to avenge the death of one whom you would be unwilling to restore to life even if you thought it was in your power to restore it! ) But the use of the enthymeme is not confined to proof, it may sometimes be employed for the purpose of ornament, as in the following instance: [*](Pro Lig. iv. 10. )

Caesar, shall the language of those whom it is your glory to have spared goad you to imitate their own cruelty?

Cicero's motive in saying this is not that it introduces any fresh reason for clemency, but because he has already demonstrated by other arguments how unjust such conduct would be,

while he adds it at the period's close as an epiphonema, not by way of proof, but as a crowning insult to his opponents. For an epiphonema is an exclamation attached to the close of a statement or a proof by way of climax. Here are two examples:

Such toil it was to found the Roman race!
Aen. i. 33.

and

The virtuous youth preferred to risk his life
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by slaying him to suffering such dishonour.

[*]( Cic. pro Mil. iv. 9, cp. V. xi. 13. )

There is also what our modern rhetoricians call the noema, a term which may be taken to mean every kind of conception, but is employed by them in the special sense of things which they wish to be understood, though they are not actually said, as in the declamation where the sister defends herself against the brother whom she had often bought out from the gladiatorial school, when he brought an action against her demanding the infliction of a similar mutilation because she had cut off his thumb while he slept:

You deserved,

she cries,

to have all your fingers,

meaning thereby,

You deserved to be a gladiator all your days.

There is also what is called a clausula. If this merely means a conclusion, it is a perfectly correct and sometimes a necessary device, as in the following case:

You must, therefore, first confess your own offence before you accuse Ligarius of anything.

[*](Pro Lig. i. 2. It is a conclusion in the logical sense. But clausula more commonly means close, conclusion, cadence of a period. Cp. what follows. ) But to-day something more is meant, for our rhetoricians want every passage, every sentence to strike the ear by an impressive close.