Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
I have now arrived at the point when I must begin to deal with that portion of the art at which those who have omitted the preceding stages generally commence. I can see, however, that certain critics will attempt to obstruct my path at the very outset: for they will urge that eloquence can dispense with rules of this kind and, in smug satisfaction with themselves and the ordinary methods and exercises of the schools, will laugh at me for my pains; in which they will be only following the example of certain professors of no small reputation. One of these gentlemen, I believe, when asked to define a figure and a thought, replied that he did not know what they were, but that, if they had anything
Another when asked whether he was a follower of Theodorus or Apollodorus, replied,
Oh! as for me, I am all for the Thracians.[*](i.e. I care naught for your rival schools of rhetoric. I give all my favour to the men armed with the buckler (the gladiators known as Thraces). Such contests of the amphitheatre interest me far more than the contests between rival schools of rhetoric. ) To do him justice, he could hardly have found a neater way to avoid confessing his ignorance. These persons, just because, thanks to their natural gifts, they are regarded as brilliant performers and have, as a matter of fact, uttered much that deserves to be remembered, think that, while most men share their careless habits, few come near them for talent.
Consequently they make it their boast that they speak on impulse and owe their success to their native powers; they further assert that there is no need of proof or careful marshalling of facts when we are speaking on fictitious themes, but only of some of those sounding epigrams, the expectation of which has filled the lecture-room; and these they say are best improvised on the spur of the moment.
Further, owing to their contempt for method, when they are meditating on some future effusion, they spend whole days looking at the ceiling in the hope that some magnificent inspiration may occur to them, or rock their bodies to and fro, booming inarticulately as if they had a trumpet inside them and adapting their agitated movements, not to the delivery of the words, but to their pursuit.
Some again settle on certain definite openings long before they have thought what they are going to say, with a view to using them as pegs for subsequent snatches of eloquence, and then after practising their delivery first in silent thought and then aloud for hours together, in utter desperation of providing any connecting links, abandon them and
The least unreasonable of them devote their attention not to the actual cases, but to their purple patches, in the composition of which they pay no attention to the subject-matter, but fire off a series of isolated thoughts just as they happen to come to hand.
The result is a speech which, being composed of disconnected passages having nothing in common with each other, must necessarily lack cohesion and can only be compared to a schoolboy's notebook, in which he jots down any passages from the declamations of others that have come in for a word of praise. None the less they do occasionally strike out some good things and some fine epigrams, such as they make their boast. Why not? slaves and barbarians sometimes achieve the same effects, and if we are to be satisfied with this sort of thing, then good-bye to any theory of oratory.