Institutio Oratoria

On the other hand we shall employ cola by preference when narrating facts, or relax the texture of our periods by considerable pauses and looser connexions, always excepting those passages in which narration is designed for decorative effect and not merely for the instruction of the audience, as for example the passage in the Verrines where Cicero [*](Verr. IV. xlviii. 106.) tells the story of the Rape of Proserpine: for in such cases a smooth and flowing texture is required.

The full periodic style is well adapted to the exordium of important cases, where the theme requires the orator to express anxiety, admiration or pity: the same is true of commonplaces and all kinds of amplification. But it should be severe when we are prosecuting and expansive in panegyric. It is also most effective in the peroration.