Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

The ancients used to let the toga fall to the heels, as the Greeks are in the habit of doing with the cloak: Plotius and Nigidius [*]( Plotins Gallus, a rhetorician, and Nigidius Figulus, an encyclopaedic writer, both contemporaries of Cicero. ) both recommend this in the books which they wrote about gesture as practised in their own day. I am consequently all the more

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surprised at the view expressed by so learned a man as Plinius Secundus, especially since it occurs in a book which carries minute research almost to excess: [*]( This work of the elder Pliny was called Studiusus. ) for he asserts that Cicero was in the habit of wearing his toga in such a fashion to conceal his varicose veins, despite the fact that this fashion is to be seen in the statues of persons who lived after Cicero's day.

As regards the short cloak, bandages used to protect the legs, mufflers and coverings for the ears, nothing short of ill-health can excuse their use. But such attention to our dress is only possible at the beginning of a speech, since, as the pleading develops, in fact, almost from the beginning of the statement of facts, the fold will slip down from the shoulder quite naturally and as it were of its own accord, while when we come to arguments and commonplaces, it will be found convenient to throw back the toga from the left shoulder, and even to throw down the fold if it should stick.

The left hand may be employed to pluck the toga from the throat and the upper portion of the chest, for by now the whole body will be hot. And just as at this point the voice becomes more vehement and more varied in its utterance, so the clothing begins to assume something of a combative pose.