Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

But these creatures have another weapon in their armoury: they seek to obtain the reputation of speaking with greater vigour than the trained orator by means of their delivery. For they shout on all and every occasion and bellow their every utterance

with uplifted hand,
to use their own phrase, dashing this way and that, panting, gesticulating wildly and wagging their heads with all the frenzy of a lunatic.

Smite your hands together, stamp the ground, slap your thigh, your breast, your forehead, and you will go straight to the heart of the dingier members of your audience. [*](pullatus = wearing dark clothes, i.e. the common people, as opposed to the upper classes wearing the white or purple bordered toga. ) But the educated speaker, just as he knows how to moderate his style, and to impart variety and artistic form to his speech, is an equal adept in the matter of delivery and will suit his action to the tone of each

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portion of his utterances, while, if he has any one canon for universal observance, it is that he should both possess the reality and present the appearance of self-control.

But the ranters confer the title of force on that which is really violence. You may also occasionally find not merely pleaders, but, what is far more shameful, teachers as well, who, after a brief training in the art of speaking, throw method to the winds and, yielding to the impulse of the moment, run riot in every direction, abusing those who hold literature in higher respect as fools without life, courage or vigour, and calling them the first and worst name that occurs to them.