Institutio Oratoria

No one will deny that such details form a part of the art of delivery, nor divorce delivery from oratory; and there can be no justification for disdaining to learn what has got to be done, especially as chironomy, which, as the name shows, is the law of gesture, originated in heroic times and met with the

approval of the greatest Greeks, not excepting Socrates himself, while it was placed by Plato among the virtues of a citizen and included by Chrysippus in his instructions relative to the education of children.

We are told that the Spartans even regarded a certain form of dance as a useful element in military training. Nor again did the ancient Romans consider such a practice as disgraceful: this is clear from the fact that priestly and ritual dances have survived to the present day, while Cicero in the third book of his de Oratore [*](lix. 220.) quotes the words of Crassus, in which he lays down the principle that the orator

should learn to move his body in a bold and manly fashion derived not from actors or the stage, but from martial and even from gymnastic exercises.

And such a method of training has persisted uncensured to our own time.