Institutio Oratoria

Is it suggested that such topics never crop up in panegyric, deliberative or forensic oratory? When the question of the construction of a port at Ostia came up for discussion, had not the orator to state his views? And yet it was a subject requiring the technical knowledge of the architect.

Does not the orator discuss the question whether livid spots and swellings on the body are symptomatic of ill-health or poison? And yet that is a question for the qualified physician. Will he not deal with measurements and figures? And yet we must admit that they form part of mathematics. For my part I hold that practically all subjects are under certain circumstances liable to come up for treatment by the orator. If the circumstances do not occur, the subjects will not concern him.

We were therefore right in asserting that the material of rhetoric is composed of everything that comes before the orator for treatment, an assertion which is confirmed by the practice of everyday speech. For when we have been given a subject on which to speak, we often preface our remarks by calling attention to the fact that the matter has been laid before us.

Gorgias indeed felt so strongly that it was the orator's duty to speak on every subject, that he used to allow those who attended his lectures to ask him questions on any subject they pleased. Hermagoras also asserted that the material of oratory lay in the cause and the questions it involved, thereby including every subject that can be brought before it.

If he denies that general questions [*](See III V. 12–16.) are the concern of oratory, he disagrees with me: but if they do concern rhetoric, that

Aristotle [*](Rhet. I. iii. 3. ) himself also by his tripartite division of oratory, into forensic, deliberative and demonstrative, practically brought everything into the orator's domain, since there is nothing that may not come up for treatment by one of these three kinds of rhetoric.

A very few critics have raised the question as to what may be the instrument of oratory. My definition of an instrument is that without which the material cannot be brought into the shape necessary for the effecting of our object. But it is not the art which requires an instrument, but the artist. Knowledge needs no instruments, for it may be complete although it produces nothing, but the artist must have them. The engraver cannot work without his chisel nor the painter without his brush. I shall therefore defer this question until I come to treat of the orator as distinct from his art.