Institutio Oratoria

Again, who does not know what different styles of eloquence are required when speaking before the grave assembly of the senate and before the fickle populace, since even when we are pleading before single judges the same style will not be suitable for use before one of weighty character and another of a more frivolous disposition, while a learned judge must not be addressed in the same tone that we should employ before a soldier or a rustic, and our style must at times be lowered and simplified, for fear that he may be unable to take it in or to understand it.

Again, circumstances of time and place demand special consideration. The occasion may be one for sorrow or for rejoicing, the time at our disposal may be ample or restricted, and the orator must adapt himself to all these circumstances.

It, likewise, makes no small difference whether we are speaking in public or in private, before a crowded audience or in comparative seclusion, in another city or our own, in the camp or in the forum: each of these places will require its own style and peculiar form of oratory, since even in other spheres of life the same actions are not equally suited to the forum, the senate-house, the Campus Martius, the theatre