Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
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
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
Others, who seem to me to have been no less desirous than those mentioned above to introduce some novelty, have added order, although they had already mentioned arrangement, as though arrangement was anything else than the marshalling of arguments in the best possible order. Dion taught that oratory consisted only of invention and arrangement, but added that each of these departments was twofold in nature, being concerned with words and things, so that expression comes under invention, and delivery under arrangement, while memory must be added as a fifth department. The followers of Theodorus divide invention into two parts, the one concerned with matter and the other with expression, and then add the three remaining departments.
Hermagoras places judgment, division, order and everything relating to expression under the heading of economy, a Greek word meaning the management of domestic affairs which is applied metaphorically to oratory and has no Latin equivalent.
A further question arises at this point, since some make memory follow invention in the list of departments, while others make it follow arrangement. Personally I prefer to place it fourth. For we ought not merely to retain in our minds the fruits of our
There are also not a few who have held that these are not parts of rhetoric, but rather duties to be observed by the orator. For it is his business to invent, arrange, express, etcetera. If, however, we accept this view, we leave nothing to art.
For although the orator's task is to speak well, rhetoric is the science of speaking well. Or if we adopt another view, the task of the artist is to persuade, while the power of persuasion resides in the art. Consequently, while it is the duty of the orator to invent and arrange, intention and arrangement may be regarded as belonging to rhetoric.
At this point there has been much disagreement, as to whether these are parts or duties of rhetoric, or, as Athenaeus believes, elements of rhetoric, which the Greeks call στοιχεῖα But they cannot correctly be called elements. For in that case we should have to regard them merely as first-principles, like the moisture, fire, matter or atoms of which the universe is said to be composed. Nor is it correct to call them duties, since they are not preformed by others, but perform something themselves. We must therefore conclude that they are parts.
For since rhetoric is composed of them, it follows that:, since a whole consists of parts, these must be parts of the whole which they compose. Those who have called them duties seem to me to have been further influenced by the fact that they wished to reserve the name of parts for another
For each of them contains the whole of rhetoric, since each of them requires invention, arrangement, expression, memory and delivery. Consequently some writers have thought it better to say that there are three kinds of oratory; those whom Cicero [*](de Or. I. xxxi. 141; Top. xxiv. 91. ) has followed seem to me to have taken the wisest course in terming them kinds of causes.