Institutio Oratoria

For in such passages greater emotional effect is produced if both hands co-operate, short gestures being best adapted to matters of small importance and themes of a gentle or melancholy character, and longer gestures to subjects of importance or themes calling for joy or horror.

It is desirable also that I should mention the faults in the use of the hands, into which even experienced pleaders are liable to fall. As for the gesture of demanding a cup, threatening a flogging, or indicating the number 500 by crooking the thumb, [*](Le. crooking the thumb against the forefinger to represent the symbol D. ) all of which are recorded by writers on the subject, I have never

But I know that it is of frequent occurrence for a speaker to expose his side by stretching his arm too far, to be afraid in one case of extending his hand beyond the folds of his cloak, and in another to stretch it as far as it will go, to raise it to the roof, or by swinging it repeatedly over his left shoulder to deliver such a rain of blows to the rear that it is scarcely safe to stand behind him, or to make a circular sweep to the left, or by casting out his hand at random to strike the standers-by or to flap both elbows against his sides.

There are others, again, whose hands are sluggish or tremulous or inclined to saw the air; sometimes, too, the fingers are crooked and brought down with a run from the top of the head, or tossed up into the air with the hand turned palm upwards. There is also a gesture, which consists in inclining the head to the right shoulder, stretching out the arm from the ear and extending the hand with the thumb turned down. This is a special favourite with those who boast that they speak

with uplifted hand.

[*](I.e. with exaggerated violence. See II. xii. 9. ) To these latter we may add those speakers who hurl quivering epigrams with their fingers or denounce with the hand upraised, or rise on tiptoe, whenever they say something of which they are specially proud. This last proceeding may at times be adopted by itself; but they convert it into a blemish by simultaneously raising one or even two fingers as high as they can reach, or heaving up both hands as if they were carrying something.

In addition to these faults, there are those which spring not from nature, but from nervousness, such as struggling desperately with our lips when they refuse to open, making inarticulate sounds, as

We must take care not to protrude the chest or stomach, since such an altitude arches the back, and all bending backwards is unsightly. The flanks must conform to the gesture; for the motion of the entire body contributes to the effect: indeed, Cicero holds that the body is more expressive than even the hands. For in the de Orator [*](xviii. 59.) he says,

There must be no quick movements of the fingers, no marking time with the finger-tips, but the orator should control himself by the poise of the whole trunk and by a manly inclination of the side.