Institutio Oratoria

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.

There is, however, a dispute as to whether there are three kinds or more. But it is quite certain that all the most eminent authorities among ancient writers, following Aristotle who merely substituted the term public for deliberative, have been content with the threefold division.

Still a feeble attempt has been made by certain Greeks and by Cicero in his de Oratore, [*](de Or. ii. 10 sq. ) to prove that there are not merely more than three, but that the number of kinds is almost past calculation: and this view has almost been thrust down our throats by the greatest authority [*](Unknown. Perhaps the elder Pliny.) of our own times.