Institutio Oratoria

This division is of rhetorical value chiefly when a law is to be praised. For example the orator may advance from praise to praise by a series of gradations, praising an enactment first because it is law, secondly because it is public, and, finally, designed for the support of religion. As regards the questions

Doubts may be raised as to whether the mover is legally in a position to propose a law, as happened in the case of Publius Clodius, whose appointment as tribune of the plebs was alleged to be unconstitutional. [*]( Clodius was a patrician and got himself made a plebeian by adoption to enable him to hold the tribunate. The question of the legality of this procedure is discussed by Cicero in the de Domo, 13–17. ) Or the legality of the proposal itself may be impugned in various ways; it may for instance be urged that the law was not promulgated within seventeen [*]( Lit. within the space of three market-days. nundinum =9 days, the second market-day being the ninth, and forming the last day of the first nundinum and the first of the second. Similarly the third market-day is the last day of the second nundinum and the first of the third. ) days, or was proposed, or is being proposed on an improper day, or in defiance of the tribunicial veto or the auspices or any other legal obstacle, or again that it is contrary to some existing law.

But such points are not suitable to elementary rhetorical exercises, which are not concerned with persons, times or particular cases. Other subjects, whether the dispute be real or fictitious, are generally treated on the following lines.

The fault must lie either in the words or the matter. As regards the words, the question will be whether they are sufficiently clear or contain some ambiguity, and as regards the matter whether the law is consistent with itself or should be retrospective or apply to special individuals. The point however which is most commonly raised is the question whether the law is right or expedient.

I am well aware that many rhetoricians introduce a number of sub-divisions in connexion with this latter enquiry. I however include under the term right all such qualities as justice, piety and religion. Justice is however usually discussed under various aspects. A question may be raised about the acts with which the law is concerned, as to whether they

Again expediency is sometimes determined by the nature of things, sometimes by the circumstances of the time. Another common subject of controversy is whether a law can be enforced, while one must not shut one's eyes to the fact that exception is sometimes taken to laws in their entirety, but sometimes only in part, examples of both forms of criticism being found in famous speeches.

I am well aware, too, that there are laws which are not proposed with a view to perpetuity, but are concerned with temporary honours or commands, such as the lex Manilia [*]( The lex Manilia proposed to give Pompey the command against Mithridates. ) which is the subject of one of Cicero's speeches. This however is not the place for instructions on this topic, since they depend on the special circumstances of the matters under discussion, not on their general characteristics.

Such were the subjects on which the ancients as a rule exercised their powers of speaking, though they called in the assistance of the logicians as well to teach them the theory of argument. For it is generally agreed that the declamation of fictitious themes in imitation of the questions that arise in the law courts or deliberative assemblies came into vogue among the Greeks about the time of Demetrius of Phalerum.

Whether this type of exercise was actually invented by him I have failed to discover, as I have acknowledged in another work. [*]( Probably the lost treatise on The causes of the decline of oratory ( De causis corruptae eloquentiae). ) But not even those who most strongly assert his claim to be the inventor, can produce any adequate authority in support of their opinion. As regards Latin teachers of rhetoric, of whom Plotius was the

I will speak of the theory of declamation a little later. In the mean time, as we are discussing the elementary stages of a rhetorical education, I think I should not fail to point out how greatly the rhetorician will contribute to his pupils' progress, if he imitates the teacher of literature whose duty it is to expound the poets, and gives the pupils whom he has undertaken to train, instruction in the reading of history and still more of the orators. I myself have adopted this practice for the benefit of a few pupils of suitable age whose parents thought it would be useful.

But though my intentions were excellent, I found that there were two serious obstacles to success: long custom had established a different method of teaching, and my pupils were for the most part full-grown youths who did not require this form of teaching, but were taking my work as their model.