Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
It is a great gift to be able to set forth the facts on which we are speaking clearly and vividly. For oratory fails of its full effect, and does not assert itself as it should, if its appeal is merely to the hearing, and if the judge merely feels that the facts on which he has to give his decision are being narrated to him, and not displayed in their living truth to the eyes of the mind.
But since different views have been held with regard to this art of representation, I shall not attempt to divide it into
Other details follow which give us such a picture of the two boxers confronting each other for the fight, that it could not have been clearer had we been actual spectators.
- Forthwith each hero tiptoe stood erect. [*](Aen. v. 426. )
Cicero is supreme in this department, as in others. Is there anybody so incapable of forming a mental picture of a scene that, when he reads the following passage from the Verrines, [*](v. xxxiii. 86.) he does not seem not merely to see the actors in the scene, the place itself and their very dress, but even to imagine to himself other details that the orator does not describe?
There on the shore stood the praetor, the representative of the Roman people, with slippered feet, robed in a purple cloak, a tunic streaming to his heels, and leaning on the arm of this worthless woman.
For my own part, I seem to see before my eyes his face, his eyes, the unseemly blandishments of himself and his paramour, the silent loathing and frightened shame of those who viewed the scene.