Institutio Oratoria

But to avoid all display of art in itself requires consummate art: this admirable canon has been insisted on by all writers, though its force has been somewhat impaired by present conditions, since in certain trials, more especially those brought on capital charges or in the centumviral [*]( The court of the cettumviri was specially concerned with cases of inheritance. ) court, the judges themselves demand the most finished and

It is difficult to preserve the happy mean in carrying this precept into effect: but by a skilful compromise it will be possible to give the impression of speaking with care but without elaborate design. The old rule still holds good that no unusual word, no overbold metaphor, no phrase derived from the lumber-rooms of antiquity or from poetic licence should be detected in the exordium.

For our position is not yet established, the attention of the audience is still fresh and imposes restraint upon us: as soon as we have won their good-will and kindled their interest, they will tolerate such freedom, more especially when we have reached topics whose natural richness prevents any licence of expression being noticed in the midst of the prevailing splendour of the passage.

The style of the exrordiumn should not resemble that of our purple patches nor that of the argumentative and narrative portions of the speech, nor yet should it be prolix or continuously ornate: it should rather seem simple and unpremeditated, while neither our words nor our looks should promise too much. For a method of pleading which conceals its art and makes no vain display, being as the Greeks say ἀνεπίφατος [*](i.e. unobtrusive. ) will often be best adapted to insinuate its way into the minds of our hearers. But in all this we must be guided by the extent to which it is expedient to impress the minds of the judges.

There is no point in the whole speech where confusion of memory or loss of fluency has a worse effect,

The length of the exordium will be determined by the case; simple cases require a short introduction only, longer exordia being best suited to cases which are complicated, suspect or unpopular. As for those who have laid it down as a law applying to all exordia that they should not be more than four sentences long, they are merely absurd. On the other hand undue length is equally to be avoided, lest the head should seem to have grown out of all proportion to the body and the judge should be wearied by that which ought to prepare him for what is to follow.

The figure which the Greeks call apostrophe, by which is meant the diversion of our words to address some person other than the judge, is entirely banned by some rhetoricians as far as the exordium is concerned, and for this they have some reason, since it would certainly seem to be more natural that we should specially address ourselves to those whose favour we desire to win.