Institutio Oratoria

For my own part, and I have authority to support me, I hold that the material of rhetoric is composed of everything that may be placed before it as a subject for speech. Plato, if I read him aright, makes Socrates [*](Gorg. 449 E. ) say to Gorgias that its material is to be

Cicero also in a passage [*](de Inv. i. 5. ) of one of his works, states that the material of rhetoric is composed of the things which are brought before it, but makes certain restrictions as to the nature of these things. In another passage, [*](de Or. I. vi. 21. I will not demand omniscience from an orator, although etc. ) however, he expresses his opinion that the orator has to speak about all kinds of things; I will quote his actual words:

although the very meaning of the name of orator and the fact that he professes to speak well seem to imply a promise and undertaking that the orator will speak with elegance and fullness on any subject that may be put before him.

And in another passage [*](ib. iii. xiv. 54. ) he says,

It is the duty of the true orator to seek out, hear, read, discuss, handle and ponder everything that befalls in the life of man, since it is with this that the orator is concerned and this that forms the material with which he has to deal.

But this material, as we call it, that is to say the things brought before it, has been criticised by some, at times on the ground that it is limitless, and sometimes on the ground that it is not peculiar to oratory, which they have therefore dubbed a discursive art, because all is grist that comes to its mill.

I have no serious quarrel with these critics, for they acknowledge that rhetoric is concerned with every kind of material, though they deny that it has any peculiar material just because of that material's multiplicity. But in spite of this multiplicity, rhetoric is not unlimited in scope, and there are other minor