Institutio Oratoria

Consequently in my opinion artistic structure gives force and direction to our thoughts just as the throwing-thong and the bowstring do to the spear and the arrow. And for this reason all the best scholars are convinced that the study of structure is of the utmost value, not merely for charming the ear, but for stirring the soul.

For in the first place nothing can penetrate to the emotions that stumbles at the portals of the ear, and secondly man is naturally attracted by harmonious sounds. Otherwise it would not be the case that musical instruments, in spite of the fact that their sounds are inarticulate, still succeed in exciting a variety of different emotions in the hearer.

In the sacred games different methods are employed to excite and calm the soul, different melodies are required for the war-song and the entreaty sung by the suppliant on bended knee, while the war-note of the trumpet that leads the army forth to battle has no resemblance to the call that sounds the retreat.

It was the undoubted custom of the Pythagoreans, when they woke from slumber, to rouse their souls with the music of the lyre, that they might be more alert for action, and before they retired to rest, to soothe their minds by melodies from the same instrument, in order that all

But if there is such secret power in rhythm and melody alone, this power is found at its strongest in eloquence, and, however important the selection of words for the expression of our thoughts, the structural art which welds them together in the body of a period or rounds them off at the close, has at least an equal claim to importance. For there are some things which, despite triviality of thought and mediocrity of language, may achieve distinction in virtue of this excellence alone.

In fact, if we break up and disarrange any sentence that may have struck us as vigorous, charming or elegant, we shall find that all its force, attraction and grace have disappeared. Cicero in his Orator breaks up some of his own utterances in this way:

Neque me divitiae movent, quibus omnes Africanos et Laelios multi venalicii mercatoresque superarunt. Change the order but a little so that it will run multi superarunt mercatores venaliciique,

Cicero also corrects passages in the speeches of Gracchus where the structure appears to him to be harsh. For Cicero this is becoming enough, but we may content ourselves with testing our own power of welding together in artistic form the disconnected words and phrases which present themselves to us. For why should we seek elsewhere for examples of faults which we may all of us find in our own work? One point, however, it is enough simply to notice—that the more beautiful in thought and language the sentence which you deprive of such structural cohesion, the more hideous will

Accordingly, although I admit that artistic structure, at any rate in perfection, was the last accomplishment to be attained by oratory, I still hold that even primitive orators regarded it as one of the objects of their study, as far at least as the rudeness of their attainments permitted. For even Cicero for all his greatness will never persuade me that Lysias, Herodotus and Thucydides were careless in this respect.