Institutio Oratoria

Some again prepare the mind of the judge, while others confirm it in opinions already formed. But such preparation or confirmation will sometimes apply to the whole case, sometimes only to particular portions, and must therefore be employed with due regard to circumstances.

I am consequently surprised that there should be a violent dispute between the leaders of two opposite schools as to whether such commonplaces should be applied to individual questions (which is the view of Theodorus), or whether the judge should be instructed in the facts before any appeal is made to his feelings (the latter being the view of Apollodorus), as though no middle course were possible and no regard were to be had to the exigencies of the case itself. Those who lay down such rules have no experience of speaking in the actual courts, the result being that text-books composed in the calm leisure of the study are sadly upset by the necessities of forensic strife.

For practically all those who have set forth the law of speaking as though it were a profound mystery, [*](cp. v. xiv. 27. ) have tied us down not merely to fixed topics for argument, but to definite

propose after making a few preliminary remarks on the subject to give a frank expression of my own views, or in other words to set forth what I perceive to have been the practice of the most distinguished orators.