Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

For the man who follows these instructions will find that facts and words appropriate to their expression will present themselves spontaneously. But it must be remembered that a long course of preliminary study is necessary and that the requisite ability must not merely be acquired, but carefully stored for use; for the anxiety devoted to the search for words, to the exercise of the critical faculty and the power of comparison is in its place while we are learning, but not when we are speaking. Otherwise, the orator who has not given sufficient attention to preliminary study will be like a man who, having no fortune, lives from hand to mouth.

If, on the other hand, the powers of speech have been carefully cultivated beforehand, words will yield us ready service, not merely turning up when we search for them, but dwelling in our thoughts and following them as the shadow follows the body.

There are, however, limits even to this form of study; for when our words are good Latin, full of meaning, elegant and aptly arranged, why should we labour further? And yet there are some who are never weary of morbid self-criticism, who throw themselves into an agony of mind almost over separate syllables, and even when they have

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discovered the best words for their purpose look for some word that is older, less familiar, and less obvious, since they cannot bring themselves to realise that when a speech is praised for its words, it implies that its sense is inadequate.

While, then, style calls for the utmost attention, we must always bear in mind that nothing should be done for the sake of words only, since words were invented merely to give expression to things: and those words are the most satisfactory which give the best expression to the thoughts of our mind and produce the effect which we desire upon the minds of the judges.

Such words will assuredly be productive of a style that will both give pleasure and awaken admiration; and the admiration will be of a kind far other than that which we bestow on portents, while the pleasure evoked by the charm will have nothing morbid about it, but will be praiseworthy and dignified.

I. What the Greeks call φράσιν we in Latin call elocuio or style. Style is revealed both in individual words and in groups of words. As regards the former, we must see that they are Latin, clear, elegant and well-adapted to produce the desired effect. As regards the latter, they must be correct, aptly placed and adorned with suitable figures.

I have already, in the portions of the first book dealing with the subject of grammar, said all that is necessary on the way to acquire idiomatic and correct speech. But there my remarks were restricted to the prevention of positive faults, and it is well that I should now point out that our words should have nothing provincial or foreign about them. For you will find

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that there are a number of writers by no means deficient in style whose language is precious rather than idiomatic. As an illustration of my meaning I would remind you of the story of the old woman at Athens, who, when Theophrastus, a man of no mean eloquence, used one solitary word in an affected way, immediately said that he was a foreigner, and on being asked how she detected it, replied that his language was too Attic for Athens. Again Asinius Pollio held that Livy,

for all his astounding eloquence, showed traces of the idiom of Padua. Therefore, if possible, our voice and all our words should be such as to reveal the native of this city, so that our speech may seem to be of genuine Roman origin, and not merely to have been presented with Roman citizenship.

Clearness results above all from propriety in the use of words. But propriety is capable of more than one interpretation. In its primary sense it means calling things by their right names, and is consequently sometimes to be avoided, for our language must not be obscene, unseemly or mean.

Language may be described as mean when it is beneath the dignity of the subject or the rank of the speaker. Some orators fall into serious error in their eagerness to avoid this fault, and are afraid of all words that are in ordinary use, even although they may be absolutely necessary for their purpose. There was, for example, the man who in the course of a speech spoke of

Iberian grass,

a meaningless phrase intelligible only to himself. Cassius Severus, however, by way of deriding his affectation, explained that he meant Spanish broom.

Nor do I see why a certain distinguished orator thought

fishes
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conserved in brine

a more elegant phrase than the word which he avoided. [*](Probably salsamenta.) But while there is no special merit in the form of propriety which consists in calling things by their real names, it is a fault to fly to the opposite extreme. This fault we call impropriety,

while the Greeks call it ἄκυρον As examples I may cite the Virgilian, [*](Aen. IV. 419. )

Never could I have hoped for such great woe,

or the phrase, which I noted had been corrected by Cicero in a speech of Dolabella's,

To bring death,

or again, phrases of a kind that win praise from some of our contemporaries, such as,

His words fell from the cross.

[*]( Presumably in the sense, He spoke like one in bodily pain. ) On the other hand, everything that lacks appropriateness will not necessarily suffer from the fault of positive impropriety, because there are, in the first place, many things which have no proper term either in Greek or Latin.

For example, the verb iaculari is specially used in the sense of

to throw a javelin,

whereas there is no special verb appropriated to the throwing of a ball or a stake. So, too, while lapidare has the obvious meaning of

to stone,

there is no special word to describe the throwing of clods or potsherds.