Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

I cannot understand why some hold that the elaboration of speech originated in the fact that

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those who were in peril owing to some accusation being made against them, set themselves to speak with studied care for the purpose of their own defence. This, however, though a more honourable origin, cannot possibly be the earlier, for accusation necessarily precedes defence. You might as well assert that the sword was invented for the purpose of self-defence and not for aggression.

It was, then, nature that created speech, and observation that originated the art of speaking. Just as men discovered the art of medicine by observing that some things were healthy and some the reverse, so they observed that some things were useful and some useless in speaking, and noted them for imitation or avoidance, while they added certain other precepts according as their nature suggested. These observations were confirmed by experience and each man proceeded to teach what he knew.

Cicero, [*](de Inv. i. 2. ) it is true, attributes the origin of oratory to the founders of cities and the makers of laws, who must needs have possessed the gift of eloquence. But why he thinks this the actual origin, I cannot understand, since there still exist certain nomad peoples without cities or laws, and yet members of these peoples perform the duties of ambassadors, accuse and defend, and regard one man as a better speaker than another.

The art of oratory, as taught by most authorities, and those the best, consists of five parts:- invention, arrangement, expression, memory, and delivery or action (the two latter terms being used synonymously). But all speech expressive of purpose involves also a subject and words.

If such expression is brief

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and contained within the limits of one sentence, it may demand nothing more, but longer speeches require much more. For not only what we say and how we say it is of importance, but also the circumstances under which we say it. It is here that the need of arrangement comes in. But it will be impossible to say everything demanded by the subject, putting each thing in its proper place, without the aid of memory.

It is for this reason that memory forms the fourth department. But a delivery, which is rendered unbecoming cither by voice or gesture, spoils everything and almost entirely destroys the effect of what is said. Delivery therefore must be assigned the fifth place.

Those (and Albutins is among them), who maintain that there are only three departments on the ground that memory and delivery (for which I shall give instructions in their proper place [*](Book II. claps. ii. and iii.) ) are given us by nature not by art, may be disregarded, although Thrasymachus held the same views as regards delivery.

Some have added a sixth department, subjoining judgment to invention, on the ground that it is necessary first to invented and then to exercise our judgment. For my own part I do not believe that invention can exist apart from judgement, since we do not say that a speaker has invented incousistent, two-edged or foolish arguments, but merely that he has failed to avoid them. It is true that Cicero in his Rhetorica [*]( No such statement is found in the de Inventione. )

includes judgment under mention; but in my opinion judgment is so inextricably mingled with the first three departments of rhetoric (for without judgment neither expression nor arrangement are possible), that I think that even delivery owes much to it. I say this with all the greater confidence because Cicero in

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his Partitiones oratoriae [*](i. 3.) arrives at the same five-fold division of which I have just spoken. For after an initial division of oratory into invention and expression, he assigns matter and arrangement to invention, words and delivery to expression, and makes memory a fifth department common to them all and acting as their guardian. Again in the Orator [*](14–17.) he states that eloquence consists of five things, and in view of the fact that this is a later work we may accept this as his more settled opinion.