Institutio Oratoria

Whither will his grief have fled while he is thus engaged? Where has the fountain of his tears been stayed? How came this callous attention to the rules of text-books to obtrude itself? Will he not rather, from his opening words to the very last he utters, maintain a continuous voice of lamentation and a mien of unvaried woe, if he desires to transplant his grief to the hearts of his audience? For if he once remits aught of his passion of grief, he

This is a point which declaimers, above all, must be careful to bear in mind: I mention this because I have no compunction in referring to a branch of the art which was once also my own, or in reverting to the consideration of the youthful students such as once were in my charge: the declaimer, I repeat, must bear this in mind, since in the schools we often feign emotions that affect us not as advocates, but as the actual sufferers.

For example, we even imagine cases where persons, either because of some overwhelming misfortune or repentance for some sin, demand from the senate the right to make an end of their lives; [*]( VII. iv. 39. It is said that poison was provided by the state of Massilia to serve the turn of such unhappy persons, so soon as they could convince the local senate that their proposed suicide was justifiable. ) and in these cases it is obviously unbecoming not merely to adopt a chanting intonation, [*](Cp. I. viii. 2. ) a fault which has also become almost universal, or to use extravagant language, but even to argue without an admixture of emotional appeal, so managed as to be even more prominent than the proof which is advanced. For the man who can lay aside his grief for a moment while he is pleading, seems capable even of laying it aside altogether