Institutio Oratoria

And we should be all the more eager to do so, since there is no art which yields a more grateful recompense for the labour bestowed upon it. This will be abundantly clear if we consider the origins of oratory and the progress it has made; and it is capable of advancing still further.

I will not stop to point out how useful and how becoming a task it is for a good man to defend his friends, to guide the senate by his counsels, and to lead peoples or armies to follow his bidding; I merely ask, is it not a noble thing, by employing the understanding which is common to mankind and the words that are used by all, to win such honour and glory that you seem not to speak or plead, but rather, as was said of Pericles, to thunder and lighten? [*](cp. Aristoph. Ach. 530: Then in his wrath Pericles the Olympian lightened and thundered and threw all Greece into confusion. )

However, if I were to indulge my own inclinations in expatiating on this subject, I should go

No one of those who have laid down rules for oratory has ever doubted that it is an art. It is clear even from the titles of their books that their theme is the art of rhetoric, while Cicero [*](de Inv. I. v. 6. The titles in question are such as Ars rhetorica, Ars Hermagorae, etc. ) defines rhetoric as artistic eloquence. And it is not merely the orators who have claimed this distinction for their studies with a view to giving them an additional title to respect, but the Stoic and Peripatetic philosophers for the most part agree with them.

Indeed I will confess that I had doubts as to whether I should discuss this portion of my inquiry, for there is no one, I will not say so unlearned, but so devoid of ordinary sense, as to hold that building, weaving or moulding vessels from clay are arts, and at the same time to consider that rhetoric, which, as I have already said, is the noblest and most sublime of tasks, has reached such a lofty eminence without the assistance of art.