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, while others besides
. Plato makes Gorgias [*](Gorg. 454 B. ) say that he is a master of persuasion in the law-courts and other assemblies, and that his themes are justice and injustice, while in reply Socrates allows him the power of persuading, but not of teaching.
Those who refused to make the sphere of oratory allinclusive, have been obliged to make somewhat forced and long-winded distinctions: among these I may mention Ariston, the pupil of the Peripatetic Critolaus, who produced the following definition,
Rhetoric is the science of seeing and uttering what ought to be said on political questions in language that is likely to prove persuasive to the people.
Being a Peripatetic he regards it as a science, not, like the Stoics, as a virtue, while in adding the words
likely to prove persuasie to the peoplehe inflicts a positive insult on oratory, in implying that it is not likely to persuade the learned. The same criticism will apply to all those who restrict oratory to political questions, for they exclude thereby a large number of the duties of an orator, as for example panegyric, the third department of oratory, which is entirely ignored.
Turning to those who regard rhetoric as an art, but not as a virtue, we find that Theodorus of Gadara is more cautious. For he says (I quote the words of his translators),
rhetoric is the art which discovers and judges and expresses, mith an elegance duly proportioned to the importance of all such elements of persuasion as may exist in any subject in the field of politics.