Institutio Oratoria

For my part I am not concerned with the date when oratory began to be taught. Even in Homer we find Phoenix [*](Il. ix. 432. ) as an instructor not only of conduct but of speaking, while a number of orators are mentioned, the various styles are represented by the speeches of three of the chiefs [*](i.e. the copious style by Nestor, the plain by Menelaus, the intermediate by Ulysses. ) and the young men are set to contend among themselves in contests of eloquence: [*](Il. xv. 284. ) moreover lawsuits and pleaders are represented in the engravings on the shield of Achilles. [*](Il. xviii. 497 sqq. )

It is sufficient to call attention to the fact that everything which art has brought to perfection originated in nature. Otherwise we might deny the title of art to medicine, which was discovered from the observation of sickness and health, and according to some is entirely based upon experiment: wounds were bound up long before medicine developed into an art, and fevers were reduced by rest and abstention from food, long before the reason for such treatment was

So too building should not be styled an art; for primitive man built himself a hut without the assistance of art. Music by the same reasoning is not an art; for every race indulges in some kind of singing and dancing. If therefore any kind of speech is to be called eloquence, I will admit that it existed before it was an art.