Institutio Oratoria

Eloquence therefore must not restrict itself to narrow tracks, but range at large over the open fields. Its streams must not be conveyed

Must lie not vary and diversify it by a thousand figures, and do all this in such a way that it seems to come into being as the very child of nature, not to reveal an artificial manufacture and a suspect art nor at every moment to show traces of an instructor's hand? What orator ever spoke thus? Even in Demosthenes we find but few traces of such a mechanism. And yet the Greeks of to-day are even more prone than we are (though this is the only point in which their practice is worse than ours) to bind their thoughts in fetters and to connect them by an inexorable chain of argument, making inferences where there was never any doubt, proving admitted facts and asserting that in so doing they are following the orators of old, although they always refuse to answer the question who it is that they are imitating. However of figures I shall speak elsewhere. [*](IX. i. ii. iii.)

For the present I must add that I do not even agree with those who hold that arguments should always be expressed in language which is not only pure, lucid and distinct, but also as free as possible from all elevation and ornateness. I readily admit that

But if the subject be one of real importance every kind of ornament should be employed, so long as it does nothing to obscure our meaning. For metaphor will frequently throw a flood of light upon a subject: even lawyers, who spend so much trouble over the appropriateness of words, venture to assert that the word litus is derived from eludere, because the shore is a place where the waves break in play.

Further, the more unattractive the natural appearance of anything, the more does it require to be seasoned by charm of style: moreover, an argument is often less suspect when thus disguised, and the charm with which it is expressed makes it all the more convincing to our audience. Unless indeed we think that Cicero was in error when he introduced phrases such as the following into an argumentative passage:

The laws are silent in the midst of arms,

A sword is sometimes placed in our hands by the laws themselves.

I undertook my present task, Marcellus Victorius, mainly to gratify your request, [*](cp. Proem, Bk. I. ) but also with a view to assist the more earnest of our young men as far as lay in my power, while latterly the energy with which I have devoted myself to my labours has been inspired by the almost imperative necessity imposed by the office conferred on me, [*](cp. Proem, Bk. IV. ) though all the while I have had an eye to my own personal pleasure. For I thought that this work would be the most precious part of the inheritance that would fall to my son, whose ability was so remarkable that it called for the most anxious cultivation on the part of his father. Thus if, as would have been but just and devoutly to be wished, the fates had torn me from his side, he would still have been able to enjoy the benefit of his father's instruction.

Night and day I pursued this design, and strove to hasten its completion in the fear that death might cut me off with my task unfinished, when misfortune overwhelmed me with such suddenness, that the success of my labours now interests no one less than myself. A second bereavement has fallen upon me, and I have lost him of whom I had formed the highest expectations, and in whom I reposed all the hopes that should solace my old age. What is there left for me to do?

Or

For what father with a spark of proper feeling would pardon me for having the heart to pursue my researches further, and would not hate me for my insensibility, had I other use for my voice than to rail against high heaven for having suffered me to outlive all my nearest and dearest, and to testify that providence deigns not at all to watch over this earth of ours? If this is not proved by my own misfortune (and yet my only fault is that I still live), it is most surely manifest in theirs, who were cut off thus untimely; their mother was taken from me earlier still, she had borne me two sons ere the completion of her nineteenth year; but for her, though she too died most untimely, death was a blessing.

Yet for me her death alone was such a blow that thereafter no good fortune could bring me true happiness. For she had every virtue that is given to woman to possess, and left her husband a prey to irremediable grief; nay, so young was she when death took her, that if her age be compared with mine, her decease was like the loss not merely of a wife, but of a daughter. Still her children survived her, and I, too,

lived on by some unnatural ordinance of fate, which for all its perversity was what she herself desired; and

I have no desire to flaunt my woes in the public gaze, nor to exaggerate the cause I have for tears; would that I had some means to make it less! But how can I forget the charm of his face, the sweetness of his speech, his first flashes of promise, and his actual possession of a calm and, incredible though it may seem, a powerful mind. Such a child would have captivated my affections, even had he been another's.

Nor was this all; to enhance my agony the malignity of designing fortune had willed that he should devote all his love to me, preferring me to his nurses, to his grandmother who brought him up, and all those who, as a rule, win the special affection of infancy.

I am, therefore, grateful to the grief that came to me some few months before his loss in the death of his mother, the best of women, whose virtues were beyond all praise. For I have less reason to weep my own fate than to rejoice at hers. After these calamities all my hopes, all my delight were centred on my little Quintilian, and he might have sufficed to console me.

For his gifts were not merely in the bud like those of his brother: as early as his ninth birthday he had put forth sure and well-formed fruit. By my own sorrows, by the testimony of my own sad heart, by his departed spirit, the deity at whose shrine my grief does worship, I swear that I discerned in him such talent, not merely in receiving instruction, although in all my wide experience I have never seen his like, nor in his power of spontaneous application, to which his

He possessed every incidental advantage as well, a pleasing and resonant voice, a sweetness of speech, and a perfect correctness in pronouncing every letter both in Greek and Latin, as though either were his native tongue. But all these were but the promise of greater things. He had finer qualities, courage and dignity, and the strength to resist both fear and pain. What fortitude he showed during an illness of eight months, till all his physicians marvelled at him! How he consoled me during his last moments. How even in the wanderings of delirium did his thoughts recur to his lessons and his literary studies, even when his strength was sinking and he was no longer ours to claim!