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 say nothing of Protagoras, who held that oratory was to be divided only into the following heads: question and answer, command and entreaty, or as he calls it εὐχωλή. Plato in his Sophist [*](222 o.) in addition to public and forensic oratory introduces a third kind which he styles προσομιλητική, which I will permit myself to translate by

conversational.

This is distinct from forensic oratory and is adapted for private discussions, and we may regard it as identical with dialectic.

Isocrates [*]( Fr. 3 s. ) held that praise and blame find a place in every kind of oratory.

The safest and most rational course seems to be to follow the authority of the majority. There is, then, as I have said, one kind concerned with praise and blame, which, however, derives its name from the better of its two functions and is called laudatory; others however call it demonstrative. Both names are believed to be derived from the Greek in which the corresponding terms are encomiastic, and epideictic.