Institutio Oratoria

For my own part (for I will not conceal my opinion, though it rests rather on actual examples than on rules), I hold that the statement of fact more than any portion of the speech should be adorned with the utmost grace and charm. But much will depend on the nature of the subject which we have to set forth.

In slighter cases, such as are the majority of private suits, the decoration must be restrained and fit close to the subject, while the utmost care must be exercised in choice of words. The words which in our purple passages are swept along by the force of our eloquence and lost in the profusion of our language, must in cases such as these be clear and, as Zeno says,

steeped with meaning.

while the figures must neither be derived from poetry nor such as are contrary to current usage, though warranted by the authority of antiquity (for it is important that our language should be entirely normal), but should be designed to relieve tedium by their variety and should be frequently

Moreover there is no portion of a speech at which the judge is more attentive, and consequently nothing that is well said is lost. And the judge is, for some reason or other, all the more ready to accept what charms his ear and is lured by pleasure to belief.

When on the other hand the subject is on a larger scale, we have a chance to excite horror by our narration of abominable wrongs or pity by a tale of woe: but we must do so in such a way as not to exhaust our stock of emotions on the spot, but merely to indicate our harrowing story in outline so that it may at once be clear what the completed picture is like to be.