Institutio Oratoria

I have made my remarks on this stage of education as brief as possible, making no attempt to say everything, (for the theme is infinite), but confining myself to the most necessary points. I will now proceed briefly to discuss the remaining arts in which I think boys ought to be instructed before being handed over to the teacher of rhetoric: for it

For there are other subjects of education which must be studied simultaneously with literature. These being independent studies are capable of completion without a knowledge of oratory, while on the other hand they cannot by themselves produce an orator. The question has consequently been raised as to whether they are necessary for this purpose.

What, say some, has the knowledge of the way to describe an equilateral triangle on a given straight line got to do with pleading in the law-courts or speaking in the senate? Will an acquaintance with the names and intervals of the notes of the lyre help an orator to defend a criminal or direct the policy of his country?

They will perhaps produce a long list of orators who are most effective in the courts but have never sat under a geometrician and whose understanding of music is confined to the pleasure which their ears, like those of other men, derive from it. To such critics I reply, and Cicero frequently makes the same remark in his Orator, that I am not describing any orator who actually exists or has existed, but have in my mind's eye an ideal orator, perfect down to the smallest detail.

For when the philosophers describe the ideal sage who is to be consummate in all knowledge and a very god incarnate, as they say, they would have him receive instruction not merely in the knowledge of things human and divine, but would also lead him through a course of subjects, which in themselves are comparatively trivial, as for instance the elaborate subtleties of formal logic: not that acquaintance

horn

crocodile

So too the teacher of geometry, music or other subjects which I would class with these, will not be able to create the perfect orator (who like the philosopher ought to be a wise man), but none the less these arts will assist in his perfection. I may draw a parallel from the use of antidotes and other remedies applied to the eyes or to wounds. We know that these are composed of ingredients which produce many and sometimes contrary effects, but mixed together they make a single compound resembling no one of its component parts, but deriving its peculiar properties from all:

so too dumb insects produce honey, whose taste is beyond the skill of man to imitate, from different kinds of flowers and juices. Shall we marvel then, if oratory, the highest gift of providence to man, needs the assistance of many arts, which, although they do not reveal or intrude themselves in actual speaking, supply hidden forces and make their silent presence felt?

But

men have proved fluent without their aid.

Their contribution is but small.

Who is ignorant of the fact that music, of which I will speak first, was in ancient times the object not merely of intense study but of veneration: in fact Orpheus and Linus, to mention no others, were regarded as uniting the roles of musician, poet and philosopher. Both were of divine origin, while the former, because by the marvel of his music he soothed the savage breast, is recorded to have drawn after him not merely beasts of the wild, but rocks and trees.

So too Timagenes asserts that music is the oldest of the arts related to literature, a statement which is confirmed by the testimony of the greatest of poets in whose songs we read that the praise of heroes and of gods were sung to the music of the lyre at the feasts of kings. Does not lopas, the Vergilian bard, sing

1. The wandering moon and labours of the Sun

Aen. i. 742.

If this be admitted, music will be a necessity even for an orator, since those fields of knowledge, which were annexed by philosophy on their abandonment by oratory, once were ours and without the knowledge of all such things there can be no perfect eloquence.

There can in any case be no doubt that some of those men whose wisdom is a household word have been earnest students of music: Pythagoras for instance and his followers popularised the belief, which they no doubt had received from earlier teachers, that the universe is constructed on the same principles which were afterwards imitated in

As for Plato, there are certain passages in his works, more especially in the Timaeus, [*](Tim. p. 47. ) which are quite unintelligible to those who have not studied the theory of music. But why speak only of the philosophers, whose master, Socrates, did not blush to receive instruction in playing the lyre even when far advanced in years?

It is recorded that the greatest generals played on the lyre and the pipe, and that the armies of Sparta were fired to martial ardour by the strains of music. And what else is the function of the horns and trumpets attached to our legions? The louder the concert of their notes, the greater is the glorious supremacy of our arms over all the nations of the earth.

It was not therefore without reason that Plato regarded the knowledge of music as necessary to his ideal statesman or politician, as he calls him; while the leaders even of that school, which in other respects is the strictest and most severe of all schools of philosophy, [*](sc. the Stoics.) held that the wise man might well devote some of his attention to such studies. Lycurgus himself, the founder of the stern laws of Sparta, approved of the training supplied by music.

Indeed nature itself seems to have given music as a boon to men to lighten the strain of labour: even the rower in the galleys is cheered to effort by song. Nor is this function of music confined to cases where the efforts of a number are given union by the sound of some sweet voice that sets the tune, but even solitary workers find solace at their toil in artless song.

So far I have attempted merely to sound the praises of the noblest

the same fact is proved by the case of Eupolis, who makes Prodamus teach both music and literature, and whose Maricas, who was none other than Hyperbolus in disguise, asserts that he knows nothing of music but letters. Aristophanes [*](Knights, 188. ) again in more than one of his plays shows that boys were trained in music from remote antiquity, while in the Hypobolimaeus of Menander an old man, when a father claims his son from him, gives an account of all expenses incurred on behalf of the boy's education and states that he has paid out large sums to musicians and geometricians.

From the importance thus given to music also originated the custom of taking a lyre round the company after dinner, and when on such an occasion Themistocles confessed that he could not play, his education was (to quote the words of Cicero)

regarded as imperfect.

Even at the banquets of our own forefathers it was the custom to introduce the pipe and lyre, and even the hymn of the Salii has its tune. These practices were instituted by King Numa and clearly prove that not even those whom we regard as rude warriors, neglected the study of music, at least in so far as the resources of that age allowed.