Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Again rhythm more readily admits of rests [*](i.e. in the musical sense. ) although they are found in metre as well. Greater license is, however, admitted when the time is measured by the beat of the feet or fingers, [*](i.e. in musio. ) and the intervals are distinguished by certain symbols indicating the number of shorts contained within a given space: hence we speak of four or five time ( τετράσημοι, or πεντάσημοι ) and others longer still, the Greek σημεῖον indicating a single beat.

In prose the rhythm should be more definite and

v7-9 p.537

obvious to all. Consequently, it depends on feet, by which I mean metrical feet, which occur in oratory to such an extent that we often let slip verses of every kind without being conscious of the fact, while everything written in prose can be shown by analysis to consist of short lines of verse of certain kinds or sections of the same.

For example, I have come across tiresome grammarians who attempted to force prose into definite metres, as though it were a species of lyric poetry. Cicero, [*]( See Or. xx. 67, sqq. ) indeed, frequently asserts that the whole art of prose-structure consists in rhythm and is consequently censured by some critics on the ground that he would fetter our style by the laws of rhythm.