Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

How much greater is the fire of his words as they stand than if he had said,

You have abused our patience a long time,
and
Your plots are all laid bare.
We may also ask what cannot be denied, as
Was Gaius Fidiculanius Falcula, I ask you, brought to justice?
[*](pro Cluent. xxxvii. 103. ) Or we may put a question to which it is difficult to reply, as in the common forms,
How is it possible?
How can that be?

Or we may ask a question with a view to throw odium on the person to whom it is addressed, as in the words placed by Seneca in the mouth of Medea: [*](Med. 451. )

  1. What lands dost bid me seek?
Or our aim may be to excite pity, as is the case with the question asked by Sinon in Virgil: [*](Aen. ii. 69. )
  1. Alas, what lands, lie cried,
  2. What seas can now receive me?
Or to embarrass our opponent and to deprive him of the power to feign ignorance of our meaning, as Asinius does in the following sentence:
Do you hear? The will which we impugn is the work of a madman, not of one who lacked natural affection.
In fact questions admit of infinite variety.

They may serve our indignation, as in the line:

  1. Are any left
  2. That still adore Juno's divinity?
Aen. i. 48.
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Or they may still express wonder, as in:
  1. To what dost thou not drive the hearts of men,
  2. Accursed greed of gold?
Aen. iii. 56.
Again, at times they may express a sharp command,

as in:

  1. Will they not rush to arms and follow forth
  2. From all the city?
Aen. iv. 592.
Or we may ask ourselves, as in the phrase of Terence,
What, then, shall I do?
[*](Eun. I. i. 1. )

A figure is also involved in a reply, when one question is asked and another is answered, because it suits the respondent's purpose better to do so, or because it aggravates the charge brought against the accused. For example, a witness for the prosecution was asked whether he had been cudgelled by the plaintiff, and replied,

And what is more, I had done him no harm.
Or the purpose may be to elude a charge, a very common form of reply. The advocate says,
I ask if you killed the man?
The accused replies,
He was a robber.
The advocate asks,
Have you occupied the farm?
The accused replies,
It was my own.

Again, the answer may be of such a kind as to make defence precede confession. For example, in the Eclogues [*](Ecl. iii. 17 and 21. ) of Virgil, when one shepherd asks:

  1. Did I not see you, villain, snare a goat
  2. Of Damon's?
the other replies:
  1. I vanquished him in song, and should he not
  2. Pay me the prize, my due?

Akin to this kind of answer is the dissimulatory

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reply, which is employed solely with the purpose of raising a laugh, and has therefore been treated in its appropriate place. [*](VI. iii. 68.) If it were meant seriously, it would be tantamount to a confession. Further, there is the practice of putting the question and answering it oneself, which may have quite a pleasing effect. Take as an example the following passage from the pro Ligario, [*](iii. 7.) where Cicero says,
Before whom do I say this? Before one who, although he was aware of these facts, yet restored me to my country even before he had seen me.

A different form of fictitious question is to be found in the pro Caelio.

Some one will say, 'Is this your moral discipline? Is this the training you would give young men?'
with the whole passage that follows. Then comes his reply,
Gentlemen, if there were any man with such vigour of mind, with such innate virtue and self-control, etc.
[*]( xvii. 39 sqq. The passage concludes, I should consider such an one the possessor of qualities which I can only call worthy of a god. ) A different method is to ask a question and not to wait for a reply, but to subjoin the reply at once yourself. For example,
Had you no house? Yes, you had one. Had you money and to spare? No, you were in actual want.
[*](Orat. lxvii. 223. ) This is a figure which some call suggestion.

Again, a question may involve comparison, as, for instance,

Which of the two then could more easily assign a reason for his opinion?
[*](pro Cluent. xxxviii. 106. ) There are other forms of question as well, some concise, some developed at greater length, some dealing with one thing only, others with several. Anticipation, or, as the Greeks call it, πρόληψις, whereby we forestall objections, is of extraordinary value in pleading; it is frequently employed in all parts of a speech, but is especially useful in the exordium.

However, it forms a genus in itself, and

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has several different species. One of these is the defence by anticipation, such as Cicero employs against Quintus Caecilius, [*](Div. in Caec. i. 1. ) where he points out that though previously he himself has always appeared for the defence, he is now undertaking a prosecution. Another is a form of confession, such as he introduces in his defence of Rabirius Postumus, [*](Chs. i. and ix.) where he admits that he himself regards his client as worthy of censure for lending money to the king. Another takes the form of prediction, as in the phrase,
For I will say without any intention of aggravating the charge.
Again, there is a form of self-correction, such as,
I beg you to pardon me, if I have been carried too far.
And, most frequent of all, there is preparation, whereby we state fully why we are going to do something or have done it.

Anticipation may also be employed to establish the meaning or propriety of words, as in the following case,

Although that was not a punishment, but merely a prevention of crime,
[*](From a lost work of Cicero.) while the same effect may be produced by qualification, as in the following sentence,
Citizens, I say, if I may call them by that name.
[*](pro Mur. xxxvii. 80. )

Again, hesitation may lend an impression of truth to our statements, when, for example, we pretend to be at a loss, where to begin or end, or to decide what especially requires to be said or not to be said at all. All speeches are full of such instances, but for the present one will be enough.

As for myself, I know not where to turn. Shall I deny that there was a scandalous rumour that the jury had been bribed, etc.?
[*](pro Cluent. i. 4. )

This device may also be employed to cover the past; for we may equally pretend that we had felt hesitation on the subject. This figure is akin to that known as communication,

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when we actually take our opponents into consultation, as Domitius Afer does in his defence of Cloatilla.
She is so agitated that she does not know what is permitted to a woman or what becomes a wife. It may be that chance has brought you into contact with the unhappy woman in her helpless plight. What counsel do you give her, you her brother, and you, her father's friends?

Or we may admit the judges to our deliberations, a device which is frequently called into play. We may say,

What do you advise?
or,
I ask you,
or,
What, then, should have been done?
Cato, for example, says,
Come now, if you had been in his place, what else would you have done?
And in another passage,
Imagine this to be a matter which concerns us all, and assume you have been placed in charge of the whole affair.

Sometimes, however, in such forms of communication we may add something unexpected, a device which is in itself a figure, as Cicero does in the Verrines:

What then? What think you? Perhaps you expect to hear of some theft or plunder.
[*](v. 5. 10.) Then, after keeping the minds of the judges in suspense for a considerable time, he adds something much worse. This figure is termed suspension by Celsus. It has two forms.

For we may adopt exactly the opposite procedure to that just mentioned, and after raising expectation of a sequel of the most serious nature, we may drop to something which is of a trivial character, and may even imply no offence at all. But since this does not necessarily involve any form of communication, some have given it the name of paradox or surprise.

I do not agree with those who extend the name of figure to a statement that something has happened unexpectedly to the

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speaker himself, like the following passage from Pollio:
Gentlemen, I never thought it would come to pass that, when Scaurus was the accused, I should have to entreat you not to allow influence to carry any weight on his behalf.

The figure known as concession springs from practically the same source as communication; it occurs when we leave some things to the judgment of the jury, or even in some cases of our opponents, as when Calvus says to Vatinius,

Summon all your assurance and assert that you have a better claim than Cato to be elected praetor.

The figures best adapted for intensifying emotion consist chiefly in simulation. For we may feign that we are angry, glad, afraid, filled with wonder, grief or indignation, or that we wish something, and so on. Hence we get passages like the following:

I am free, I breathe again,
[*](pro Mil. xviii. 47. ) or,
It is well,
or,
What madness is this?
[*](pro Muren. vi. 14. ) or,
Alas! for these degenerate days!
[*](in Cat. i. 2. ) or,
Woe is me; for though all my tears are shed my grief still clings to me deep-rooted in my heart,
[*](Phil.. xxvi. 64. ) or,
  1. Gape now, wide earth.
Unknown.
To this some give the name of exclamation,

and include it among figures of speech. When, however, such exclamations are genuine, they do not come under the head of our present topic: it is only those which are simulated and artfully designed which can with any certainty be regarded as figures. The same is true of free speech, which Corificius [*]( The author of Auct. ad Herennium, iv. 36. ) calls licence, and the Greeks παῤῥησία. For what has less of the figure about it than true freedom? On the other hand, freedom of speech may frequently be made a

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cloak for flattery.