Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

We must also remember that Cicero [*](Or. 30 sq. ) thinks that not even 'Thucydidcs or Xenophon will be of much service to an orator, although he regards the style of the former as a veritable call to arms and considers that the latter was the mouthpiece of the Muses. It is, however, occasionally permissible to borrow the graces of history to embellish our digressions, provided always that we remember that in those portions of our speech which deal with the actual question at issue we require not the swelling thews of the athlete, but the wiry sinews of the soldier, and that the cloak of many colours which Demetrius of Phalerum [*](cp. § 80. ) was said to wear is but little suited to the dust and heat of the forum.

There is, it is true,

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another advantage which we may derive from the historians, which, however, despite its great importance, has no bearing on our present topic; I refer to the advantage derived from the knowledge of historical facts and precedents, with which it is most desirable that our orator should be acquainted; for such knowledge will save him from having to acquire all his evidence from his client and will enable him to draw much that is germane to his case from the careful study of antiquity. And such arguments will be all the more effective, since they alone will be above suspicion of prejudice or partiality.

The fact that there is so much for which we must have recourse to the study of the philosophers is the fault of orators who have abandoned [*](cp. I Pref. 11. ) to them the fullest portion of their own task. The Stoics more especially discourse and argue with great keenness on what is just, honourable, expedient and the reverse, as well as on the problems of theology, while the Socratics give the future orator a first-rate preparation for forensic debates and the examination of witnesses.

But we must use the same critical caution in studying the philosophers that we require in reading history or poetry; that is to say, we must bear in mind that, even when we are dealing with the same subjects, there is a wide difference between forensic disputes and philosophical discussions, between the law-courts and the lecture-room, between the precepts of theory and the perils of the bar.

Most of my readers will, I think, demand that, since I attach so much importance to reading, I should include in this work some instructions as to what authors should be read and what their special

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excellences may be. To do this in detail would be an endless task.

Remember that Cicero in his Brutus, after writing pages and pages on the subject of Roman orators alone, says nothing of his own contemporaries with the exception of Caesar and Marcellus. What limit, then, would there be to my labours if I were to attempt to deal with them and with their successors and all the orators of Greece as well?

No, it was a safer course that Livy adopted in his letter to his son, where he writes that he should read Cicero and Demosthenes and then such orators as most resembled them. Still,

I must not conceal my own personal convictions on this subject. I believe that there are few, indeed scarcely a single one of those authors who have stood the test of time who will not be of some use or other to judicious students, since even Cicero himself admits that he owes a great debt even to the earliest writers, who for all their talent were totally devoid of art.

And my opinion about the moderns is much the same. For how few of them are so utterly crazy as not to have the least shadow of hope that some portion or other of their work may have claims upon the memory of posterity? If there is such an one, he will be detected before we have perused many lines of his writings, and we shall escape from him before the experiment of reading him has cost us any serious loss of time.

On the other hand, not everything that has some bearing on some department of knowledge will necessarily be of service for the formation of style, with which we are for the moment concerned. Before, however, I begin to speak of individual authors, I must make a few general remarks about the variety of judgments which have been passed

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upon them.

For there are some who think that only the ancients should be read and hold that they are the sole possessors of natural eloquence and manly vigour; while others revel in the voluptuous and affected style of to-day, in which everything is designed to charm the ears of the uneducated majority.