Orator
Orator Hellenistic Cicero, Marcus Tullius LatinWhether it were the harder thing or the greater, Brutus, to refuse you when you ask the same favour again and again, or to accomplish what you ask, I have long and often debated. For to refuse one whom I love beyond all others, and by whom I feel that I am held most dear—especially when his request is just and his desire honourable—seemed to me decidedly harsh; yet to undertake a task so great that it is difficult not only to carry out by skill but even to grasp in thought, I judged scarcely to belong to a man who shrinks from the censure of the learned and the discerning.
For what is greater than this: that, when there is so wide a difference among good orators, one should judge which is the best kind and, so to speak, the very form of speaking? And since you ask me this so often, I will set my hand to it, not so much in the hope of carrying it through as out of a willingness to make the attempt; for I would rather, having complied with your zeal, that you should miss my discernment than, if I had not done so, my goodwill.
You ask, then, and now for the more often, which kind of eloquence I most approve, and what that thing seems to me to be to which nothing can be added, which I judge supreme and most perfect. In this I fear that, if I achieve what you wish and portray the orator you seek, I may slacken the zeal of many who, broken by despair, will be unwilling to attempt what they distrust their power to attain.
But it is fitting that all should attempt all things, who have set their hearts on great things and on things to be sought with great effort. And if any man either falls short by nature in that force of surpassing genius, or is less well equipped with the discipline of the great arts, let him nonetheless hold to the course he can; for in following first place it is honourable to come to rest in the second or the third. For among the poets—to speak of the Greeks—there is room not for Homer alone, or Archilochus or Sophocles or Pindar, but for those who stand second to these, or even below the second.
Nor indeed did the greatness of Plato deter Aristotle from writing in philosophy, nor did Aristotle himself, by his admirable learning and abundance, quench the studies of the rest. And not only were excellent men not deterred from the noblest pursuits, but not even the craftsmen withdrew from their arts, who could not match the beauty of the Ialysus, which we saw at Rhodes, or of the Coan Venus; nor, deterred by the image of Olympian Jupiter or the statue of the Spear-bearer, did the rest make less trial of what they could accomplish, or how far they might advance; and of these so great was the multitude, so great in each one's own kind was the praise, that, while we marvelled at the highest, we yet approved the lower.
Among orators, however—the Greek ones at least—it is wonderful how far one man surpasses all the rest; and yet, when there was a Demosthenes, there were many great and famous orators, and there had been before, nor were any lacking afterward. For which reason there is no cause why the hope of those who have given themselves to the study of eloquence should be broken, or their industry grow faint; for neither is that very thing which is best to be despaired of, and in surpassing things those are great which come nearest to the best.
And for my part, in fashioning the supreme orator, I shall shape him such as perhaps no one ever was. For I do not ask who he was, but what that thing is than which nothing could be more excellent—a thing which in the unbroken sweep of speaking does not often, and I am inclined to think never, shine forth, but which in some part may at times shine, more densely in some, more rarely perhaps in others.
But this is my settled view: that there is nothing in any kind so beautiful but that there is something more beautiful from which it is, as it were, an image expressed from some original face; and this cannot be perceived by the eyes or the ears or by any sense, but we grasp it by thought and mind alone. And so, in the case both of the statues of Phidias, than which we see nothing in that kind more perfect, and of those paintings I have named, we can yet conceive of things more beautiful; nor indeed did that artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or of Minerva,
contemplate any one from whom he might draw the likeness; rather, in his own mind there dwelt a certain surpassing form of beauty, and gazing upon it and fixed upon it he directed his art and his hand toward its likeness. As, therefore, in forms and figures there is something perfect and excellent, by imitation of whose conceived form the works of art are referred and which itself falls under the eyes, so we behold with the mind the form of perfect eloquence, while we seek with the ears its likeness.
These forms of things Plato calls Ideas—that gravest authority and master not only of understanding but of speaking; and he denies that they come to be, and says that they exist forever and are contained by reason and intelligence; all else is born, perishes, flows, slips away, and does not remain longer in one and the same state. Whatever, then, there is concerning which we reason by method and rule, that is to be brought back to the ultimate form and aspect of its own kind.
And I see that this first step of mine is drawn not from the disputations of the rhetoricians but fetched from the heart of philosophy, and that, being at once ancient and somewhat obscure, it will meet with either some censure or at least some wonder. For men will either marvel what these things have to do with the matters we seek—and for them the case itself, once understood, will give satisfaction, so that it may seem to have been fetched from afar not without reason—or they will censure us because we explore untrodden paths and leave the beaten ones.
But I, for my part, both am aware that I often seem to say new things, when I am saying things very old but unheard by most, and I confess that I—orator, if indeed I am one, or whatever sort I am—came forth not from the workshops of the rhetoricians but from the walks of the Academy; for those are the courses of manifold and varied discourses, in which the footprints of Plato were first impressed. But by his disputations and those of the other philosophers the orator has been both most stirred and most aided; for all the richness and, as it were, the woodland of speech is drawn from them, and yet not sufficiently equipped for forensic cases, which, as they themselves were wont to say, they left to the ruder Muses.
Thus this forensic eloquence, scorned and rejected by the philosophers, lacked indeed many great aids; yet, adorned with words and thoughts, it won applause among the people and did not greatly fear the judgment and censure of the few: so that to the learned there was wanting popular eloquence, and to the eloquent elegant learning.
Let it then be laid down first—what will afterward be the better understood—that without philosophy the man we seek cannot be made eloquent; not, however, that everything is in it, but that it helps as the wrestling-school helps the actor; for small things are often most rightly compared with great. For no one can speak more broadly and abundantly of great and varied matters without philosophy;—
seeing that even in Plato's Phaedrus Socrates says that Pericles surpassed the other orators in this, that he had been a hearer of the natural philosopher Anaxagoras; from whom he reckons that, along with certain other splendid and lofty things, he learned this too, that he became rich and fruitful, and knew—which is the greatest thing in eloquence—by what modes of speech each part of men's minds is stirred; the same may be thought of Demosthenes, from whose letters
it may be understood how frequent a hearer he was of Plato;—nor indeed without the discipline of the philosophers can we discern the genus and species of each thing, nor unfold it by definition, nor distribute it into its parts, nor judge what is true and what false, nor discern what is consequent, see what is contradictory, distinguish what is ambiguous. What shall I say of the nature of things, the knowledge of which supplies great abundance to speech; of life, of duties, of virtue, of character? Can these be either spoken of or understood at all without much discipline in those very matters?
To these so many and so great matters there must be applied innumerable adornments; which alone, indeed, were at that time handed down by those who were reckoned masters of speaking; whence it comes about that no one attains that true and finished eloquence, because the discipline of understanding is one thing and that of speaking another, and the knowledge of matters is sought from some teachers, that of words from others.
And so Marcus Antonius, to whom the age of our fathers assigned almost the first place in eloquence—a man by nature exceedingly keen and discerning—in that one book which he left behind says that he had seen many men eloquent of speech, but no one eloquent in the full sense. Plainly there dwelt in his mind a form of eloquence which he discerned with his mind but did not see in actual fact. And being a man of the keenest genius—for so he was—he, desiring much both in himself and in others, saw no one who could rightly be called eloquent; and if he thought neither himself nor Lucius Crassus eloquent,
he surely held in his mind some comprehended form of eloquence, to which, since nothing was wanting, he could not admit within that form those who lacked one thing or several. Let us track down this man, then, Brutus, if we can—the man whom Antonius never saw, or who never existed at all; and if we cannot imitate and express him—which that same Antonius said had scarcely been granted to a god—we may perhaps be able to say what sort of man he ought to be.
There are in all three kinds of speaking, in each one of which certain men have flourished, but in all of them, which is what we want, very few have flourished equally. For there have been the grand-speaking, so to call them, with ample and weighty thoughts and majesty of words—vehement, varied, copious, weighty, equipped and ready to move and turn men's minds; and this very thing some achieved with a rough, harsh, bristling style, not rounded and brought to a close, others with one smooth, well-built, and shapely. And on the other side there have been the plain, the keen, who teach everything and make it clearer rather than fuller, polished with a certain subtle and compressed style; and within that same kind some are shrewd but unpolished and deliberately like the rude and the unskilled, others within the same leanness are neater, that is to say witty, even flowering and lightly adorned.
There is, moreover, a certain middle kind set between these and, as it were, tempered, using neither the keen edge of the latter nor the thunderbolt of the former, neighbour to both, excelling in neither, partaking of each—or rather, if we seek the truth, lacking each; and it flows in one even tenor, as they say, in speaking, bringing nothing but ease and evenness, or it adds a few clusters, as it were, in a garland, and distinguishes the whole speech with modest adornments of words and thoughts.
Whoever have attained the power of these several kinds, each in its own, have had a great name among orators. But the question must be asked whether they have achieved what we want. For we see that there have been some who could speak the same matters both ornately and weightily, and the same shrewdly and plainly. And would that among the Latins we could find the likeness of such an orator! It would be an excellent thing not to seek the foreign, but to be content with what is our own.
But I—the same who, in that discourse of ours set out in the Brutus, granted much to the Latins, whether to encourage others or because I loved my own people—I remember that I set one man, Demosthenes, far before all; and him I would adjust to the eloquence I conceive in my mind, not to that which I myself have known in some particular person. None has appeared more weighty than he, none more shrewd, none more tempered. And so we must admonish those whose unskilled talk has grown common, who either desire to be called Attic or themselves wish to speak in the Attic manner, that they should most of all admire this man, in comparison with whom I do not believe that even Athens itself was more Attic; let them learn what the Attic is, and let them measure his eloquence by its own powers, not by their own weakness.
For now each man praises only so much as he hopes he can imitate. But still I think it not amiss to teach those endowed with the best zeal but a less firm judgment what is the proper praise of the Attic writers. The discernment of the hearers has always been the governess of the orators' eloquence. For all who wish to win approval look to the will of those who hear, and to it, and to their judgment and nod, they wholly fashion and fit themselves.
And so Caria and Phrygia and Mysia, because they are the least polished and least elegant, took up, as suited to their ears, a certain rich and, as it were, fattened kind of diction, which their neighbours the Rhodians—with no very wide sea between—never approved, and which the Athenians utterly rejected; whose judgment was always discerning and pure, so that they could endure to hear nothing but what was uncorrupted and elegant. While the orator served their scruple, he dared to set down no insolent word, none offensive.
And so this man, whom we have said surpassed the rest, in that oration for Ctesiphon—by far his best—spoke from the outset more subdued, then, while he disputes about the laws, more compressed; afterward, kindling the judges by degrees, when he saw them aflame, in what remained he exulted more boldly. And yet, in this very speaker who weighs carefully the weight of all his words, Aeschines censures certain things and assails them, and mocking calls them harsh, offensive, intolerable; nay, he even asks of him—when indeed he calls him a beast—whether those are words or monstrous prodigies; so that to Aeschines not even Demosthenes seems to speak in the Attic manner.
For it is easy to mark some burning word, so to speak, and, when the fires of the mind are now quenched, to laugh at it. And so Demosthenes, clearing himself, makes a jest: he denies that the fortunes of Greece rested on this—whether he used this word or that, whether he stretched out his hand to this side or to that. In what manner, then, would a Mysian or a Phrygian be heard at Athens, when even Demosthenes is assailed as turgid? But when, with bent and howling voice, in the Asiatic manner, a man had begun to sing, who would endure him, or rather who would not order him to be carried off?
To the Attic ears, therefore, polished and scrupulous, those who fit themselves are to be reckoned as speaking in the Attic manner. Of these there are many kinds; these men, however, suspect of only one kind what it is. For they think that whoever speaks roughly and uncouthly—provided he do it elegantly and cleanly—he alone speaks in the Attic manner. They err in saying "alone"; in saying "Attic," they are not deceived.
For by their judgment, if that alone is Attic, not even Pericles spoke in the Attic manner, to whom the first place was without dispute assigned; who, if he had used the plain kind, would never have been said by the poet Aristophanes to flash and thunder and to confound Greece. Let that most charming and most polished writer Lysias, then, speak in the Attic manner—for who could deny it?—provided we understand this to be Attic in Lysias, not that he is plain and unadorned, but that he has nothing insolent or inept; whereas to speak ornately and weightily and copiously must be either the property of the Attic writers, or else neither Aeschines nor Demosthenes is Attic.
But see, some men profess themselves Thucydideans: a strange new and unheard-of breed of the unskilled. For those who follow Lysias follow a certain advocate—not, indeed, an ample and grand one, yet subtle and elegant and one who could take his stand splendidly in forensic cases. Thucydides, however, narrates deeds done and wars and battles, weightily indeed and well, but nothing can be transferred from him to forensic and public use. Those very harangues have so many obscure and hidden thoughts that they can scarcely be understood; which in civil oratory is the very greatest of faults.
But what is this great perversity in men, that, with corn discovered, they should feed on acorns? Could the diet of men have been refined by the kindness of the Athenians, but their speech could not? Who, moreover, of the Greek rhetoricians ever drew anything from Thucydides? "But he was praised by all." I grant it; yet only as a prudent, severe, and weighty unfolder of events—not as one who handled cases in the courts, but as one who narrated wars in his histories; and so he was never reckoned an orator.
Nor indeed, had he not written history, would his name survive, especially since he had been a man of honour and noble birth. Yet no one imitates the weight either of his words or of his thoughts; but when men have spoken certain maimed and gaping phrases, which they could have made even without a master, they think themselves true-born Thucydideans. I have even met with one who desired to be like Xenophon, whose speech is indeed sweeter than honey, but most remote from the din of the forum.
Let us turn back, then, to him whom we wish to begin upon, and to be fashioned at last with that eloquence which Antonius found in no man. A great and arduous work, in truth, Brutus, we undertake; but nothing is hard, I think, to one who loves. And I love, and have always loved, your genius, your studies, your character. Moreover, I am kindled more each day, not by longing alone—by which indeed I am consumed, missing our meetings, the familiarity of our daily life, your most learned conversations—but also by the incredible fame of your admirable virtues, which, though unlike in appearance, are joined by your discernment.
For what is so far apart as affability from severity? Yet who was ever held either more upright than you, or more agreeable? What is so difficult as, in deciding the disputes of very many, to be loved by all? Yet you bring it about that you send away even those against whom you decide both fair-minded and appeased. And so you achieve this, that though you do nothing for the sake of winning favour, yet all that you do is welcome. Therefore of all lands Gaul alone does not burn in the common conflagration; in which you enjoy your own self, since you are known to be present in the light of Italy and move among the flower or the strength of the best citizens. And how great is this, that amid the greatest occupations you never intermit the pursuits of learning, but always either yourself write something or call me to writing!
And so I set my hand to this work straightway after the Cato was finished—which I should never have touched, fearing the times that are hostile to virtue, had I not deemed it a wrong not to obey you, who urged me and stirred up the memory, dear to me, of that man—but I call you to witness that, asked by you, and reluctant, I have dared to write these things. For I wish the charge to be shared with you, so that, if I should not be able to sustain so great an inquiry, the blame for the unjust burden laid upon me may be yours, the blame for accepting it mine; in which, however, the error of our judgment will be made good by the praise of the office assigned by you.
But in every matter the most difficult thing is to set forth the form of the best—what is called in Greek the character—because what is best seems different to different men. "I delight in Ennius," says one, "because he does not depart from the common usage of words"; "I in Pacuvius," says another: with this man all the verses are adorned and elaborated, with the former far more carelessly; make a third prefer Accius. For judgments are various, as among the Greeks, nor is it easy to unfold what form most excels. In paintings some are delighted by the rough, the uncouth, the hidden, and the shadowy, others, on the contrary, by the bright, the cheerful, the well-lit. What is there by which you might express some rule or formula, when each thing excels in its own kind, and the kinds are many? By this scruple I have not been driven back from this attempt; and I have reckoned that in all things there is something best, even if it lie hidden, and that it can be judged by one who is skilled in that matter.
But since there are several kinds of orations, and these diverse, nor do they all fall into one form—those of panegyrics and histories and such persuasive pieces as Isocrates made his Panegyricus, and many others who are named sophists, and the form of the rest of those writings which stand apart from forensic contention and from that whole kind which in Greek is called epideictic, because it is prepared, as it were, for inspection for the sake of delight—I shall not embrace these at this time; not that they are to be neglected, for that is, as it were, the nurse of the orator whom we wish to fashion and concerning whom we are striving to say something more exquisite. By it both the abundance of words is nourished, and their arrangement and rhythm enjoy a certain freer licence.
Pardon, too, is granted to the trimness of thoughts, and the witty, sure, and circumscribed roundings of words are allowed; and deliberately—not by ambush, but openly and in the open—it is wrought, so that word answers to word as if measured out and matched, so that opposites are often set side by side and contraries compared, and so that the ends are alike terminated and return the same sound in their falling; which things, in the reality of cases, we both do far more rarely and certainly more covertly. In the Panathenaicus, indeed, Isocrates confesses that he pursued these things zealously; for he had written not for the contest of the courts, but for the pleasure of the ears.
These devices, they say, Thrasymachus of Chalcedon first handled, and Gorgias of Leontini, then Theodorus of Byzantium and many others, whom Socrates in the Phaedrus calls "word-craftsmen"; of whose work much is clever enough, but, like things newly and just now coming to birth, minute and resembling little verses and overmuch painted. Wherefore the more wonderful are Herodotus and Thucydides; whose age, though it fell within the times of those I have named, were nonetheless themselves furthest removed from such dainties—or rather follies. For the one flows on without any roughness, like a calm river; the other is borne along more impetuously and, on warlike matters, sings even in a kind of war-note; and by these first, as Theophrastus says, history was set in motion, so that it dared to speak more richly and more ornately than its predecessors.
To the age of these succeeded Isocrates, who beyond all others of the same kind is always praised by us, though sometimes, Brutus, with your gentle and learned resistance; but you will perhaps grant me my point, if you come to know what I praise in him. For when Thrasymachus seemed to him chopped up by minute rhythms, and Gorgias too—who yet are handed down as the first to have joined words by a certain art—and Theodorus, on the other hand, too abrupt and not, so to speak, sufficiently rounded, he was the first to set about expanding sentences with words and filling them out with softer rhythms; and in this, since he taught those who became leaders, some in speaking, some in writing, his house was held to be the workshop of eloquence.
And so, as I, when I was being praised by our Cato, easily endured to be blamed by the rest, so Isocrates seems, on the testimony of Plato, to be able to despise the judgments of others. For there is, as you know, on, as it were, the last page of the Phaedrus, Socrates speaking in these very words: "Still a young man even now, Phaedrus, is Isocrates, but I am willing to say what I prophesy of him." "What, pray?" says the other. "He seems to me to be of greater genius than to be compared with the speeches of Lysias, and besides, of a greater bent toward virtue; so that it will be no wonder at all if, when he has advanced in age, he either, in this kind of speeches to which he now devotes himself, so far surpasses all the other boys who have ever touched oratory as a man surpasses children, or, if he is not content with these, by some divine impulse of mind he aspires to greater things; for there is by nature a certain philosophy in this man's mind."
These things Socrates prophesies of the young man. But these things of the older man Plato writes—and he writes as his contemporary; and he, the assailer of all the rhetoricians, admires this one alone; and as for me, let those who do not love Isocrates suffer me to err together with Socrates and Plato. A sweet kind of oratory, then, and free and flowing, witty in its thoughts, sonorous in its words, is found in that epideictic kind which we have said is the property of the sophists—fitter for show than for battle, dedicated to the gymnasium and the wrestling-school, scorned and driven from the forum. But since eloquence itself, reared on these nourishments, afterward colours and strengthens itself, it was not amiss to speak of the orator's cradle, as it were. But these things belong to games and pageantry; let us now come into the battle-line and the combat.
Since there are three things the orator must look to—what he says, and in what place each thing, and in what manner—we must indeed say what is best in each, but in a manner somewhat other than is usual in the handing-down of an art. We shall set down no precepts, for that we have not undertaken, but we shall sketch the appearance and form of excellent eloquence; nor shall we set forth by what means it is acquired, but what sort of thing it seems to us to be.
And first, two things briefly; for they are not so much marks of the highest praise as necessary, and yet almost common to many men. For both to find and to judge what one is to say are indeed great things, and, as it were, the soul within the body, but they belong more to discernment than to eloquence: and yet in what case is discernment idle? Let this orator, then, whom we wish to be supreme, know the topics of arguments and reasonings.
For since, whatever it is that turns on controversy or on contention, in it the question is either whether a thing is, or what it is, or of what quality it is:—whether it is, by signs; what it is, by definitions; of what quality it is, by the parts of right and wrong; that the orator may be able to use these—not the common orator, but this excellent one—let him always, if he can, draw the controversy away from particular persons and times; for one may dispute more broadly about the genus than about the part, so that what has been proved in the universal must of necessity be proved in the part;—
this question, then, drawn from particular persons and times to the principle of the universal kind, is called thesis. In this Aristotle trained the young, not in the manner of the philosophers, to dispute subtly, but for the abundance of the rhetoricians, on both sides, that a thing might be said the more ornately and richly; and he handed down the topics—for so he calls them—as it were the marks of arguments, from which a speech might be drawn on either side.
This man of ours, then—for we seek not some declaimer from the school or a brawler from the forum, but the most learned and most perfect of men—will, since fixed topics are handed down, run through them all, use the apt ones, speak generically; whence flow also those that are called commonplaces. Nor indeed will he use this abundance without discernment, but will weigh and select all things; for not always nor in all cases do arguments of the same weight come from the same topics.
He will therefore bring judgment to bear, and will not only find what to say but will also weigh it. For nothing is more fruitful than men's minds, especially those that are cultivated by disciplines. But as fertile and rich cornfields pour forth not only the crops but also weeds most hostile to the crops, so sometimes from those topics there are born certain things either trivial, or foreign to the cases, or useless. And unless great selection of these is brought to bear by the orator's judgment,
in what manner will he cling and dwell among his own good points, or soften the hard ones, or hide what cannot be dissolved and altogether crush them, if he may, or turn aside men's minds, or bring forward something else which, set against the obstacle, may be more plausible than that which stands in the way?
And now with what diligence will he arrange the things he has found? Since that was the second of the three. He will doubtless make honourable porches and illustrious approaches to the case; and when he has seized men's minds at the first onset, he will weaken and shut out what is against him; of his strongest points he will set some first, some last, and will press the lighter ones home in between.
And in the first two parts of speaking we have described summarily and briefly what sort of man he ought to be. But, as was said before, in these parts, though they are weighty and great, there is less both of art and of labour; whereas, when he has found both what and in what place he is to say it, that is by far the greatest thing—to see in what manner. For it is well said—what our Carneades was wont to say—that Clitomachus said the same things, but Charmadas said them in the same manner too. And if in philosophy it matters so much in what manner you speak, where the matter is regarded and the words are not weighed, what, pray, is to be thought in cases which the speech wholly governs?
And this indeed, Brutus, I perceived from your letters—that you were not inquiring this, what sort of orator I would have to be supreme in finding and in arranging, but you seemed to me to ask this: what kind of the actual oratory itself I judged best—a difficult thing, immortal gods, and of all things the most difficult. For since oratory is supple and tender, and so flexible that it follows wherever you turn it, then varied natures and inclinations have produced kinds of speaking widely differing among themselves:
a flood of words and volubility are dear to some, who place eloquence in the speed of utterance; distinct and pointed intervals, pauses and breathings-out delight others: what can be so diverse? Yet in both there is something excellent. Some labour at smoothness and evenness and a pure and, as it were, candid kind of speaking; behold, others pursue a certain hardness and severity in their words and a kind of sadness in their oratory; and—what we divided a little before, that some wish to seem weighty, some plain, some tempered—as many kinds of orations as we have said there are, just so many kinds of orators are found.
And since I have now begun to swell this office more fully than was asked of you—for to you, asking only about the kind of oratory, I have answered briefly even about finding and arranging—I shall now not speak about the manner of oratory alone, but also about delivery: so that no part will be passed over, since indeed concerning memory nothing need be said in this place, which is common to many arts.
But in what manner a thing is delivered consists in two things, in action and in utterance. For action is, as it were, a certain eloquence of the body, since it consists of voice and movement. The changes of the voice are as many as those of the minds, which are most of all moved by the voice. And so that perfect orator, whom our discourse has long been pointing to, in whatever way he wishes to seem affected himself and the mind of the hearer to be moved, will bring to bear an appropriate tone of voice; concerning which I would say more, if this were a time for precepts or if you were asking this. I would speak also of gesture, with which the countenance is joined; in all of which it can scarcely be said how much it matters in what manner the orator uses them.
For the inarticulate have often borne off the fruit of eloquence by the dignity of their action, and many of the eloquent have been thought inarticulate through the unsightliness of their delivery; so that not without cause did Demosthenes assign to delivery the first place, and the second, and the third; for if there is no eloquence without it, while it itself, without eloquence, is so great, surely it can do most in speaking. He, then, who seeks the chief place in eloquence will wish both to speak fiercely with a strained voice, and gently with a subdued one, and to seem weighty with a lowered voice, and pitiful with a bent one;
for there is a certain wonderful nature in the voice, of which—of its three tones in all, the bent, the high, and the low—so great and so sweet a variety is perfected in song. There is, moreover, even in speaking a certain more hidden song—not this peroration of the rhetoricians of Phrygia and Caria, almost a chant, but that which Demosthenes and Aeschines mean, when the one casts in the other's teeth his inflections of voice; for Demosthenes even says that the man whom he often mentions used to wail with a sweet and clear voice.
In which this too seems to me worth noting, toward the pursuit of sweetness in the voice: for Nature herself, as if she were tuning the speech of men, placed in every word a high tone, and not more than one, nor further from the last syllable than the third; the more, therefore, should industry follow Nature as its guide to the pleasure of the ears.
And goodness of voice indeed is to be wished for; for it is not in our power, but the management and use of it are in our power. Therefore that prince of orators will vary and change it: pursuing all the degrees of tones, now straining, now relaxing them. And likewise he will so use movement that nothing is in excess. In gesture the carriage upright and lofty; pacing seldom and not far; advance moderate and that too rare; no softness of the neck, no nimble play of the fingers, no joint falling to a measured beat; governing himself rather by the whole trunk and by a manly bending of the sides, by a thrusting out of the arm in vehement passages, by a drawing in of it in the calmer ones.
But the countenance, which after the voice has the most power—how much dignity and how much charm will it bring! In which, when you have brought it about that there be nothing inept or grimacing, then there is need of a certain great control of the eyes. For as the countenance is the image of the mind, so the eyes are its tokens; and the measure both of their gladness and, in turn, of their sadness the very matters under discussion will temper.
But now the appearance of that perfect orator and of the highest eloquence must be expressed. That he excels in this one thing, while all else lies hidden in him, the very name indicates; for he who has embraced all these things is called neither "inventor" nor "composer" nor "actor," but in Greek, from "to speak," rhetor, and in Latin "eloquent"; for of the other things that are in an orator each man claims for himself some part, but the greatest power of speaking—that is, of "eloquing"—is granted to this man alone.
For although certain philosophers too have spoken ornately—since Theophrastus took his name from the divinity of his speech, and Aristotle challenged Isocrates himself, and they say that the Muses spoke, as it were, with the voice of Xenophon, and far above all who have ever written or spoken Plato stood out as prince both in sweetness and in weight—yet the speech of these men has neither the sinews nor the stings of the orator and of the forum.
They speak with the learned, whose minds they prefer to soothe rather than to incite, and they speak of matters peaceful and least turbulent, for the sake of teaching, not of capturing; so that, in this very thing, that they hunt after some delight in their speaking, they seem to some to do more than is necessary. From this kind, therefore, it is not difficult to set apart that eloquence of which we now treat.
For the speech of the philosophers is soft and, as it were, born in the shade, furnished neither with popular thoughts nor with popular words, nor bound by rhythms, but loosed more freely; it has nothing wrathful, nothing envious, nothing fierce, nothing pitiful, nothing crafty—chaste, modest, in a certain way an uncorrupted maiden. And so it is called conversation rather than oratory. For although all speech is "oration," yet the speech of the orator alone is marked with this proper name.
The resemblance of the sophists, of whom I spoke above, seems to need to be more sharply distinguished, for they all wish to pursue the same flowers that the orator employs in his cases. But in this they differ: that, since it is their aim not to disturb minds but rather to soothe them, and not so much to persuade as to delight, they both do this more openly than we and more frequently, and they seek out neat thoughts rather than plausible ones, often depart from the matter, weave in fables, transfer words from a higher source and arrange them as painters arrange a variety of colours, match equals with equals, set opposites against contraries, and very often end their clauses alike.
To this kind history is the near neighbour, in which both narration is done ornately and often a region or a battle is described; harangues, too, and exhortations are inserted; but in these something drawn-out and flowing is sought, not this twisted and keen oratory. From these, not much otherwise than from the poets, this eloquence which we seek must be called apart. For the poets, too, have raised a question, what that thing might be by which they themselves differed from the orators: formerly they seemed to differ most in rhythm and verse, but now among the orators rhythm itself has grown common.
For whatever it is that falls under some measure of the ears, even if it be without verse—for that indeed is a fault of oratory—is called number, which in Greek is called rhythmos. And so I see that it has seemed to some that the diction of Plato and of Democritus, though it stand apart from verse, yet, because it is borne along more impetuously and uses the brightest lights of words, is rather to be deemed a poem than the diction of the comic poets; in whom, save that there are little verses, there is nothing else unlike everyday talk. Yet that is not the greatest thing about the poet, though he is the more praiseworthy in this, that he pursues the virtues of the orator, while being bound the more tightly by verse.
But for my part, although the voice of certain poets is grand and ornate, yet, as I judge that in it there is a greater licence than in us for making and joining words, so I observe too that not a few of them serve their pleasure by words rather than by matter; nor indeed, if there is one thing alike among them—and that is the judgment and choice of words—can the unlikeness in other matters on that account not be perceived; but that is neither doubtful, and, if it has any matter for inquiry, this very thing is nonetheless not necessary to what we have proposed. The orator, therefore, set apart from the eloquence of the philosophers, of the sophists, of the historians, of the poets, must be unfolded by us, what sort of man he is to be.
He will be eloquent, then—for this is the man we seek on the authority of Antonius—he who in the forum and in civil cases will so speak as to prove, to delight, to bend. To prove belongs to necessity, to delight to sweetness, to bend to victory: for this alone of all things can do most toward winning cases. But as many as are the offices of the orator, so many are the kinds of speaking: subtle in proving, moderate in delighting, vehement in bending; in which one thing lies all the power of the orator.
Of great judgment, therefore, and of the highest faculty too will that governor and, as it were, temperer of this threefold variety have to be; for he will both judge what is needful in each case and will be able to speak in whatever way the case shall demand. But the foundation of eloquence, as of all else, is wisdom. For as in life, so in oratory, nothing is more difficult than to see what is becoming. The Greeks call this prepon; let us, for our part, call it "the becoming." Concerning it many fine precepts are given, and the matter is most worthy of knowledge; through ignorance of it men err not only in life but very often both in poems and in oratory.
Now what is becoming the orator must see not in his thoughts alone but also in his words. For not every fortune, not every rank, not every authority, not every age, nor indeed every place or time or hearer is to be handled with the same kind of words or of thoughts; and always, in every part of oratory as of life, what is becoming must be considered; which depends both on the matter in hand and on the persons both of those who speak and of those who hear.
And so this topic, which lies far and wide open, the philosophers are wont to treat in their works on duties—not when they dispute of the right itself, for that indeed is one thing—the grammarians in the poets, the eloquent in every kind and part of cases. For how unbecoming it is, when you speak before a single judge about gutter-drippings, to use the amplest words and commonplaces; and to speak of the majesty of the Roman people in a subdued and plain manner! Here men err in the whole kind; but in the person men err either in their own, or in that of the judges, or even of their adversaries, and not in the matter only but often in the word; though without matter no word has any force, yet the same matter is often either approved or rejected when set forth in one word or another.
And in all things one must see how far; for though each thing has its own measure, yet too much offends more than too little; in which Apelles said that those painters too erred who did not perceive what was enough. This is a great topic, Brutus—as you are well aware—and demands another great volume; but for the matter in hand this is enough. When we say "this is becoming"—which we constantly use of all things said and done, the least and the greatest—when, I say, we say "this is becoming," "that is not becoming," and it appears everywhere how great a thing it is, and it is placed in one matter while it is wholly another thing whether you say "becoming" or "fitting";—for "fitting" declares the perfection of a duty,
which both must always be used and by all, while "becoming" means, as it were, what is apt and consonant with the time and the person; and this holds good very often in deeds, and likewise in words, and finally in countenance and gesture and gait; and so, on the other hand, the "unbecoming." And if the poet shuns this as the greatest fault—who errs even when he attaches the speech of a good man to a bad one, or of a wise man to a fool; if, finally, that painter saw, when in the sacrifice of Iphigenia Calchas was sad, Ulysses sadder, Menelaus mourning, that the head of Agamemnon must be veiled, since he could not imitate that supreme grief with his brush; if, finally, the actor asks what is becoming—what are we to think the orator must do? But since this is so great a thing, what the orator is to do in cases and in their, as it were, members, he himself will see: this at least is clear, that not only the parts of an oration but whole cases too must be handled, some in one form of speaking, others in another.
It follows that for each kind the mark and formula must be sought: a great and arduous work, as we have already often said; but at the outset we had to consider what we were doing, while now, wherever we are borne, the sails must surely be spread. And first there must be fashioned by us that man whom alone they call Attic.
He is subdued and lowly, imitating ordinary usage, differing from the unskilled more in fact than in seeming. And so those who hear him, however inarticulate they themselves may be, nevertheless trust that they can speak in that manner. For the plainness of his oratory does indeed seem imitable to one who reckons it, but nothing is less so to one who tries. For though it is not of the fullest blood, it ought nevertheless to have some sap, so that, even if it lack those greatest strengths, it may be, so to speak, of sound health.
First, then, let us free him, as it were, from the bonds of rhythms. For there are certain oratorical rhythms, as you know, which we shall treat of soon, to be observed by a certain method, but in another kind of oratory; in this one they are wholly to be left aside. Let there be something loosed, yet not wandering, so that he may seem to walk freely, not to stray licentiously. Let him neglect even to cement word to word, as it were. For that very thing—the hiatus and clashing of vowels—has a certain softness, and something that betokens a not ungraceful carelessness in one who labours over the matter rather than over the words.
But concerning the rest there will need to be care, when these two things have been made freer for him: the periodic round and the gluing-together of words. For those very contracted and minute matters are not to be handled carelessly, but there is even a careful kind of carelessness. For as some women are said to be unadorned, as if that very thing became them, so this subtle oratory delights even when uncombed; for there is in each something whereby it is the more charming, but so as not to be apparent. Then will all conspicuous ornament, like that of pearls, be removed;
not even the curling-irons will be applied; and all the cosmetics of a feigned whiteness and ruddiness will be repelled; only elegance and neatness will remain. The speech will be pure and Latin; it will be spoken clearly and plainly; what is becoming will be looked to all around; one thing will be absent—what Theophrastus reckons fourth among the praises of oratory: that ornament, sweet and overflowing. Keen and frequent thoughts will be set down, and dug out, I know not whence, from the hidden depths; and—what will reign in this orator—there will be a modest use of the orator's, as it were, furniture.
For we have, in a manner, our own furniture, which lies in adornments—one of matters, the other of words. Now the adornment of words is twofold: one of single words, the other of words arranged together. The single word is approved in proper and customary words, because it either sounds best or makes the matter clearest; in unfamiliar words it is either a thing transferred and made from elsewhere as if on loan, or a thing made by the man himself and new, or one ancient and unaccustomed; but even unaccustomed and ancient words belong among the proper, except that we use them rarely.
Arranged words have adornment if they produce some trimness which would not remain, though the thought remains, if the words were changed; for the adornments of thoughts which remain even if you change the words are indeed very many, but those that stand out are fewer.
Therefore that plain orator, provided he is elegant, will be neither bold in coining words, but modest and sparing in transferring them, and rather lowly in the ancient ones and in the rest of the adornments both of words and of thoughts; in that transference perhaps more frequent, which all talk uses most often, not only of townsmen but even of countrymen: since it is theirs to say that the vines "gem," that the fields "thirst," that the crops are "joyful," that the corn is "luxuriant."
None of these is too boldly said, but it is either like that from which you transfer, or, if a thing has no name of its own, the word seems taken for the sake of teaching, not of play. This adornment this subdued speaker will use a little more freely than the rest, yet not so licentiously as if he were using the amplest kind of speaking; and so that unbecoming thing—which must be understood from what is becoming—appears here too, when some word is transferred from a higher source and that is set in a lowly oration which would have been becoming in another.
But that trimness which lights up the arrangement of words with those lights which the Greeks call schemata, as if certain gestures of oratory—the same word being transferred by them also to the adornments of thoughts—this man indeed, the subtle one, whom certain people rightly call Attic, save only that they call him so and nothing else, applies, but a little more sparingly; for, as in the furnishing of a banquet, withdrawing from magnificence he will wish to seem not only sparing but also elegant, and he will choose what he shall use.
For most things are suited to the very thrift of this orator of whom I speak. For those things of which I spoke before are to be shunned by this keen speaker: equals matched with equals, clauses ending alike and falling in the same fashion, and charms sought, as it were, by the change of a letter—lest a laboured trimness and a certain hunting after delight should appear, manifestly caught in the act;
and likewise, if any repetitions of words call for some straining and outcry, they will be foreign to this subdued kind of oratory; the rest he will be able to use indifferently, only let him loosen and divide the run of words, and use the most customary words and the softest transferences; he will take up also those lights of thoughts which will not be vehemently brilliant. He will not make the commonwealth speak, nor will he call up the dead from the lower world, nor will he, heaping up many things together, bind them in one comprehension. These belong to stronger lungs, and are neither to be expected nor demanded of the man we are fashioning; for he will be more restrained in oratory, as in voice.
But most of those things will suit this plainness too, though he will use the same adornments more roughly; for such is the man we bring in. There will be added a delivery not tragic nor of the stage, but with a moderate movement of the body, yet accomplishing much with the countenance—not that by which they are said to "make faces," but that by which men frankly signify with what feeling they pronounce each thing.
To this kind of oratory will be sprinkled also salty wit, which has wonderful power in speaking; of which there are two kinds, one of pleasantry, the other of raillery. He will use both; the one in narrating something charmingly, the other in throwing and shooting a jest, of which there are several kinds; but now we are doing another thing.
This, however, we do warn: that the orator will so use the laughable that it be neither too frequent, lest it be buffoonish, nor somewhat obscene, lest it be like the mime, nor petulant, lest it be wicked, nor aimed at calamity, lest it be inhuman, nor at crime, lest laughter take the place of hatred; and that it be foreign neither to his own person nor to that of the judges nor to the time. For these things are referred to that "unbecoming."
He will avoid, too, jokes sought-out and not framed on the spur of the moment, but brought from home, which for the most part are frigid. He will spare both friendships and high stations, will avoid incurable insults, will only prick his adversaries, and these too not always nor all of them nor in every way. These things excepted, he will so use salt and pleasantry that, of those new Attic speakers, I have come to know no such man, although that surely is most of all Attic.
This I judge to be the form of the subdued orator, but one great nonetheless and a genuine and true-born Attic; since whatever is salty or wholesome in oratory is the property of the Attic writers. Of these, however, not all are witty: Lysias well enough, and Hyperides; Demades is reported beyond the rest; Demosthenes is held to have less of it—though to me nothing seems more urbane, but he was not so much given to raillery as to pleasantry; and that is the mark of a keener genius, this of a greater art.
There is another kind richer and somewhat more robust than this lowly one of which we have spoken, but more subdued than that amplest one of which we shall now speak. In this kind there is the very least of sinew, but the very most of sweetness. For it is fuller than this finely-wrought one, but more subdued than that ornate and copious one.
To this all the adornments of speaking are suited, and there is the most of sweetness in this form of oratory. In it many flourished among the Greeks, but Demetrius of Phalerum, in my judgment, surpassed the rest; whose oratory, while it flows calmly and quietly, is lit up, as it were, by certain stars—words transferred and changed. By "transferred" I mean, as I have often said already, those that are carried over from another thing by way of likeness, for the sake either of sweetness or of poverty; by "changed," those in which, in place of the proper word, another is substituted that means the same, taken from some related thing.
And although this is done by transferring, yet Ennius transferred in one way when he said "Of citadel and of city I am bereft," in another when he said "Bristling Africa trembles with terrible tumult": this the rhetoricians call hypallage, because words are as it were exchanged for words; the grammarians call it metonymy,
because nouns are transferred; Aristotle, moreover, subjoins both these very things to transference, and also abuse, which he calls catachresis, as when we say a "minute" mind for a "small" one; and we abuse neighbouring words, if need be, either because it delights or because it is becoming. Now when several transferences have flowed on continuously, the oratory becomes plainly of another kind; and so the Greeks call this kind allegory—rightly by name, but better in genus is he who calls all those things transferences. These Demetrius of Phalerum most frequents, and they are most sweet; and although transference is abundant in him, yet nowhere are the "changes" more frequent.
Into this same kind of oratory—for I speak of that moderate and tempered one—fall all the lights of words, many also of thoughts; broad and learned disputations will be unfolded by this same man, and commonplaces spoken without contention. Why say more? From the schools of the philosophers such men for the most part come forth; and unless that stronger speaker be set beside him for comparison, this one of whom I speak will of himself win approval.
For there is also a certain notable and flowering kind of oratory, painted and polished, in which all the charms of words, all of thoughts, are entwined. This whole kind has flowed down from the springs of the sophists into the forum; but, scorned by the plain and repulsed by the weighty, it has settled in that middle station of which I speak.
The third is that ample, copious, weighty, ornate kind, in which assuredly is the greatest power. This it is whose ornament and abundance of speaking the nations admired and suffered eloquence to have the greatest weight in their states—but this eloquence which is borne along with a great course and din, which all looked up to, which they admired, which they distrusted their power to attain. To this eloquence it belongs to handle minds, to move them in every way. It now breaks through, now creeps into the feelings; it implants new opinions, it tears up rooted ones.
But there is a great difference between this kind of speaking and the former. He who has laboured in that subtle and keen kind, so as to speak shrewdly and cleverly, and has aimed at nothing higher, is, with this one thing perfected, a great orator, and, if not the greatest, yet he will move least on slippery ground, and, if he once takes his stand, he will never fall. That middle speaker, however, whom I call moderate and tempered, provided only he has sufficiently equipped himself in his own kind, will not dread the doubtful and uncertain chances of speaking; even if at some time he succeeds less well, as often happens, he will yet enter into no great danger: for he cannot fall from a height.
But this speaker of ours, whom we set first—weighty, keen, ardent—if he was born for this one thing alone, or has exercised himself in this alone, or has devoted himself to this one kind, and has not tempered his abundance with those other two kinds, is most of all to be despised. For that subdued speaker, because he speaks shrewdly and with veteran cunning, is already accounted wise; the middle one is sweet; but this most copious one, if he is nothing else, commonly seems scarcely sane enough. For one who can say nothing tranquilly, nothing gently, nothing in a divided, defined, distinct, witty way—especially since cases must be handled partly wholly in that manner, partly in some part—if he begins to inflame the matter when ears are not prepared, he seems to rave among the sane and, like a drunken man, to play the Bacchant among the sober.
We hold him, then, Brutus, the man we seek—but in the mind; for if I had grasped him with my hand, not even he himself, with all his great eloquence, would have persuaded me to let him go. But that eloquent man whom Antonius never saw has surely been found. Who, then, is he? I shall embrace it briefly, and discourse upon it at more length. He is the eloquent man who can speak lowly matters subtly, lofty matters weightily, and middling matters with temperance. No such man, you will say, ever existed.
So be it, granted there was none. For I am disputing what I desire, not what I have seen, and I come back to that form and appearance of the thing, of which I had spoken, drawn from Plato, which, though we do not discern it, we can nevertheless hold in the mind. For I do not seek the eloquent man, nor anything mortal and perishable, but that very thing, possessed of which a man is eloquent; which is nothing else than eloquence itself, which we can see with no eyes but those of the mind. He, then, will be eloquent—to repeat that same thing once more—who shall be able to speak small things subduedly, middling things temperately, great things weightily.
My whole case for Caecina turned on the words of an interdict: we unfolded entangled matters by defining, we praised the civil law, we distinguished ambiguous words. In the Manilian law Pompey had to be adorned: with tempered oratory we pursued the abundance of adorning. The whole right of preserving the majesty of the state was contained in the case of Rabirius: therefore in it we blazed forth in every kind of amplification.
But these things must at times be tempered and varied. What kind, then, is not found in the seven books of the accusation? what in the case of Habitus? what in that of Cornelius? what in very many of our defences? which examples I would have selected, had I not thought them either well known, or that those who sought them could read them for themselves. For there is no praise in any kind whatever of which there is not in our orations some specimen, if not a perfection, yet at least an attempt and a sketch.
We do not attain it; yet we see what it is becoming to pursue. For we are not now speaking of ourselves, but of the matter; in which we are so far from admiring our own work, and are so hard to please and so peevish, that not even Demosthenes himself satisfies us; who, although he stands out alone above all in every kind of speaking, yet does not always fill my ears; so greedy and capacious are they, and often they desire something immeasurable and infinite.
But nevertheless, since you have come to know this orator most diligently and wholly, together with that most zealous student of him, Pammenes, when you were at Athens, and do not let him out of your hands, and yet read our works too—you surely see that he accomplishes much, that we attempt much; that he is able, that we wish, to speak in whatever way the case demands. For he, being great, both came after great men himself and had the greatest orators as his contemporaries; we have had less. We should have done a great thing, if indeed we had been able to reach what we strive for, in that city in which, as Antonius says, no eloquent man had ever been heard.
And yet, if Crassus did not seem eloquent to Antonius, or to himself, never would Cotta have seemed so, never Sulpicius, never Hortensius; for Cotta spoke nothing amply, Sulpicius nothing gently, Hortensius not many things weightily; the earlier men, Crassus I mean and Antonius, were more apt for every kind. We have found, then, that the ears of the state were starved of this manifold oratory, evenly poured forth into all the kinds; and we were the first—whoever we were, and however little we spoke—to turn them to incredible eagerness for hearing this kind.
With what great applause did we, as very young men, deliver those passages which we afterward began to feel, somewhat later, had by no means cooled enough: "For what is so common as breath to the living, earth to the dead, the sea to those tossed by it, the shore to the shipwrecked? They so live, while they can, that they cannot draw breath from heaven; they so die that their bones do not touch the earth; they are so tossed by the waves that they are never washed clean; they are at last so cast forth that not even dead do they find rest among the rocks"—and what follows; for all these are such as are praised in a young man not so much for substance and ripeness as for hope and expectation. From this same talent come those riper things: "wife of the son-in-law, stepmother of the son, rival of the daughter."
Nor indeed was there in us this one ardour alone, to say everything in this manner. For that very youthful redundance has many things subdued, some even a little more cheerful, as in the cases for Habitus, for Cornelius, and several others. For no orator wrote so many things even in Greek leisure as are our writings, and these have that very variety which I approve.
Or should I grant to Homer, to Ennius, to the rest of the poets, and most of all to the tragic, that they should not in all places use the same straining, and should often change it, and sometimes even come near to the everyday kind of talk—and should I myself never depart from that fiercest straining? But why do I bring forward the poets, of divine genius? We have seen actors than whom nothing could be more excellent in their kind, who not only gave satisfaction in the most dissimilar parts, while yet they kept within their own kind, but whom we have seen greatly please both as comedians in tragedies and as tragedians in comedies: shall I not labour?
When I say "I," Brutus, I mean you; for in me, indeed, what was to be has long ago been wrought; but will you conduct all cases in the same manner? or will you reject some kind of case? or in the same cases will you keep one and the same breath without any change? Demosthenes indeed—whose likeness in bronze I lately saw among the images of yourself and your kin, when I had come to you at your Tusculan villa, because I believe you love him—yields nothing to Lysias in subtlety, nothing to Hyperides in cleverness and keenness, nothing to Aeschines in smoothness and splendour of words.
Many whole orations of his are subtle, as that against Leptines; many wholly weighty, as certain of the Philippics; many varied, as that against Aeschines about the false embassy, and as that against the same on behalf of the cause of Ctesiphon. Then, as often as he wishes, he seizes that middle kind, and, departing from the weightiest, glides into it by preference. Yet he stirs applause, and accomplishes most in speaking, just when he uses the passages of weight.
But let us go away from this man for a little, since indeed we are inquiring about the kind, not about the man: let us rather unfold the power and nature of the thing itself, that is, of eloquence. Let us, however, remember what we have already said before, that we shall say nothing for the sake of precept, and shall rather so act as to seem to speak as appraisers, not as masters. In this, however, we often go further, because we see that not only you will read these things—you who have them far better known than we, who seem, as it were, to teach—but that this book, even if less by our recommendation, must yet by your name be published abroad.
I think, then, that it belongs to the perfectly eloquent man not only to have that faculty which is his own, of speaking diffusely and broadly, but also to take up the neighbouring and bordering science of the dialecticians. Although speech seems to be one thing, disputation another, and to "talk" not the same as to "speak," yet both lie in discoursing: let the method of disputing and of talking belong to the dialecticians, but that of speaking and adorning to the orators. Zeno, indeed, from whom comes the school of the Stoics, was wont to demonstrate with his hand what difference there was between these arts; for when he had pressed his fingers together and made a fist, he said dialectic was of that sort; but when he had drawn them apart and spread out his hand, he said eloquence was like that open palm.
And even before him Aristotle, at the beginning of his Art of Rhetoric, says that that art corresponds, as it were, from the other side, to dialectic, so that they differ between themselves in this, evidently—that this method of speaking is broader, that of talking more contracted. I wish, therefore, that to this supreme man every method of talking which can be drawn toward speaking be known; which matter—as does not in the least escape you, who are versed in these arts—has had a twofold way of teaching. For Aristotle himself handed down very many precepts of discoursing, and afterward those who are called dialecticians brought forth many thornier ones.
For my part, I judge that he who is led by the praise of eloquence should not be wholly raw in these matters, but instructed either in that ancient discipline or in this of Chrysippus. Let him first know the force, the nature, the kinds of words, both single and coupled; then in how many ways each thing is said; by what method it is judged whether a thing is true or false; what follows from each, what is consequent to each, or contrary; and, since many things are said ambiguously, in what manner each of them ought to be divided and explained. These things the orator must hold—for they often occur—but, because of themselves they are somewhat squalid, there will need to be applied in unfolding them a certain brightness of oratory.
And since in all things that are taught by method and rule it must first be established what each thing is—for unless it is agreed among those who debate what that thing is which is in dispute, neither can the matter ever be rightly discussed nor brought to an end—our mind must often be unfolded in words concerning each matter, and the wrapped-up notion of a thing must be opened by defining, since indeed a definition is a statement which shows, as briefly as may be, what the thing in question is; then, as you know, when the genus of each thing has been unfolded, it must be seen what are the forms or parts of that genus, so that the whole discourse may be distributed into them.
There will be, therefore, this faculty in the man whom we wish to be eloquent, that he can define a thing—and not do it so compressedly and narrowly as is usual in those most learned disputations, but both more plainly and also more richly and more suited to common judgment and popular intelligence; and likewise, when the matter shall require, he will distribute and divide a universal genus into fixed species, so that none is either passed over or redundant. But when he is to do this, or in what manner, nothing for the present, since, as I said above, I wish to be a judge, not a teacher.
Nor indeed let him be equipped by the dialecticians alone, and have all the topics of philosophy known and handled. For nothing about religion, nothing about death, nothing about piety, nothing about love of country, nothing about good things or bad, nothing about virtues or vices, nothing about duty, nothing about pain, nothing about pleasure, nothing about the disturbances and errors of the mind—which often fall into cases and are handled too meagrely—nothing, I say, can be said and unfolded weightily, amply, copiously without that knowledge of which I have spoken.
I am speaking, even now, of the matter of oratory, not of the kind of speaking itself. For I wish the orator first to have a matter to speak of, worthy of learned ears, before he considers in what words he is to say each thing; whom too—that he may be the grander and, in a certain way, the more lofty, as I said above of Pericles—I would not have ignorant even of the natural philosophers. Assuredly in all things, when he returns from heavenly matters to human, he will both speak and feel more loftily and magnificently.
When he has come to know those divine things, I would not have him ignorant of these human ones either. Let him hold the civil law, which forensic cases daily need. For what is baser than to undertake the patronage of legal and civil controversies, when you are ignorant of the laws and of the civil law? Let him learn also the order of things done and of ancient memory—most of all, of course, that of our own state, but also of imperious peoples and illustrious kings; which labour our friend Atticus lightened for us, who, having preserved and marked the dates, while he passed over nothing illustrious, bound up the memory of seven hundred years in a single book. But to be ignorant of what happened before you were born—that is to be always a child. For what is the life of a man, unless it is woven together by the memory of ancient things with the age of those who went before? And the recalling of antiquity, and the bringing-forward of examples, brings to oratory, with the greatest delight, both authority and credit.
Thus equipped, then, he will come to cases, of which he will have first known the very kinds. For it will be clear to him that nothing can be in dispute in which either the matter or the words do not make the controversy: the matter, either of the true, or of the right, or of the name; the words, either of the ambiguous or of the contrary. For if at any time one thing seems to be in the meaning, another in the words, there is a certain kind of ambiguity which is wont to arise from an omitted word, in which we see two things signified—that which is proper to ambiguities.
Since the kinds of cases are so few, the precepts of arguments too are few. There have been handed down twofold topics from which they are drawn: some from the things themselves, others borrowed. The handling of the matters, then, makes an oration admirable; for the matters themselves lie in very easy knowing. For what now follows that belongs to art, except to begin the oration in such a way that the hearer is either won over, or roused, or made ready to learn; to set forth the matter briefly and plausibly and clearly, so that what is being done can be understood; to confirm one's own points, to overthrow the adversary's, and to do this not confusedly but by concluding the several arguments in such a way that there is brought about what is consequent to those things which are assumed for the confirming of each point; and after all, in the peroration, to conclude by inflaming or quenching? How he is to handle these parts severally is hard to say in this place; for they are not always handled in one way.
But since I am seeking not whom I should teach but whom I should approve, I shall first approve the man who has seen what is becoming. For this wisdom must most of all be applied by the eloquent man, that he be the governor of times and persons. For I think one must speak neither always, nor before all, nor against all, nor for all, nor with all in the same manner. He, then, will be eloquent who can fit his oratory to whatever shall be becoming. And when he has determined this, then, as each thing is to be said, so he will say it, neither plain things meagrely nor grand things minutely, nor again the contrary, but his oratory will be even and equal to the matters themselves.
The openings modest, not yet kindled with lofty words, but keen in their thoughts, either for the offence of the adversary or for the commendation of himself. The narratives credible, and unfolded clearly not in the historical but almost in everyday speech. Then, if the case is slight, then there will be a slight thread of arguing too, both in teaching and in refuting, and this will be so held that as great an accession is made to the oratory as to the matter.
But when there falls out a case in which the power of eloquence can be brought forth, then the orator will pour himself forth more broadly, then he will rule and bend men's minds and so affect them as he wills—that is, as the nature of the case and the reason of the time shall demand. But all that admirable ornament of his, on account of which eloquence rose into so great honour, will be twofold. For while every part of the oration ought to be praiseworthy, so that no word falls from him but is either weighty or elegant, yet there are two parts that are most luminous and, as it were, full of action: one of which I place in the question of the universal kind, which, as I said above, the Greeks call thesis; the other in the heightening and amplifying of matters, which is by the same men named auxesis.
Which, though it ought to be evenly diffused throughout the whole body of the oration, will yet most excel in the commonplaces; which are called "common" for this reason, that they seem to be the same for many cases, but they will have to be made proper to single ones. But that part of the oration which concerns the universal kind often contains whole cases. For whatever it is in which there is, as it were, the contest of the controversy, which in Greek is called the krinomenon, that, it is held, should be so spoken of that it is led over to the perpetual question, and the discourse is made about the universal kind—except when the dispute is about the true, which is wont to be inquired into by conjecture.
And it will be said not in the manner of the Peripatetics—for theirs is an elegant exercise, established ever since Aristotle—but somewhat more sinewy, and matters of general kind will be so spoken of that on behalf of the accused many things are said gently, and against the adversaries harshly. But for heightening matters, and on the other side for casting them down, there is nothing that oratory cannot accomplish; which must be done amid the very arguments, as often as there is given a place either for amplifying or for diminishing, and almost without limit in the peroration.
For two things remain which, well handled by the orator, make eloquence admirable. Of these one is what the Greeks call ethikon, suited to characters and to manners and to all the custom of life; the other is what the same men name pathetikon, by which minds are disturbed and stirred, and in which alone oratory reigns. The former is courteous, pleasant, prepared for winning goodwill; this latter is vehement, kindled, urged on, by which cases are snatched away: which, when it is borne along impetuously, can be withstood by no means whatever.
By which kind we, of middling power or even far less, but always using a great onset, have often cast our adversaries from their whole standing. To us, on behalf of an intimate defendant, the supreme orator Hortensius made no answer; by us the most audacious of men, Catiline, accused in the senate, was struck dumb; to us, when in a private case, great and weighty, the elder Curio had begun to answer, he suddenly sat down, saying that his memory had been snatched from him by poisons.
What shall I say of appeals to pity? Of which I have made the more use because, even if we spoke as several advocates, they nonetheless all left the peroration to me; in which, that I might seem to excel, I attained it not by genius but by grief. These qualities, whatever they may be in me—and it grieves me how great they are—yet appear in the orations, although the books lack that breath on account of which those same things, when they are pleaded, are wont to seem greater than when they are read.
Nor indeed is the mind of the judges to be moved by pity alone—which we are wont to use so feelingly that, while concluding, we have held an infant child in our arms; that in another case, having roused a noble defendant and lifted up his little son too, we have filled the forum with wailing and lamentation—but it must also be brought about that the judge grow angry and be appeased, that he envy and favour, that he despise and admire, that he hate and love, that he desire and disdain, that he hope and fear, that he be glad and grieve; in which variety the accusation will furnish examples of the harsher passions, my defences of the gentler.
For in no manner can the mind of the hearer be either roused or soothed by a measure not attempted by me—I would say "perfected," if I judged it so, and if in truth I did not dread the charge of arrogance; but, as I said above, no force of genius, but a great force of feeling kindles me, so that I cannot hold myself; nor would the man who heard ever be kindled, unless the oratory came to him burning. I would use examples of my own household, had you not read them; I would use those of others, either Latin, if I could find any, or Greek, if it were becoming. But of Crassus there are very few, and these not of judicial cases; nothing of Antonius, nothing of Cotta, nothing of Sulpicius; Hortensius spoke better than he wrote.
But of this power which we seek let us conjecture how great it is, since we have no example—or, if we follow examples, let us take them from Demosthenes, and that from continuous discourse, from that passage in the trial of Ctesiphon where he set about speaking of his own deeds, counsels, and services to the state. That oration, assuredly, can be so enclosed within the form which is implanted in our minds that no greater eloquence is even required.
But now the form remains, and that "character," as it is called; what sort it ought to be can be understood from what has been said above. For we have touched on the lights both of single words and of arranged ones; in which he will so abound that no word goes forth from his mouth but is either elegant or weighty; and from every kind the transferences will be most frequent, because these, on account of their likeness, carry men's minds across and bring them back and move them this way and that—which motion of thought, swiftly stirred, of itself delights. And the rest that are taken from the arrangement of words, as it were lights, bring great ornament to the oration; for they are like those things which, in the ample adornment of the stage or the forum, are called insignia—not because they alone adorn, but because they stand out.
The same principle holds of these things which are the lights of oratory and, in a manner, its insignia: when words are either doubled and repeated, or set down slightly changed; or when oratory is led oftener from the same word, or cast back into the same, or both; or when the same word is joined repeated, or the same is referred to the end; or when one word is set down continuously, not in the same sense; or when words fall alike or end alike; or when contraries are matched with contraries; or when there is a step-by-step ascent upward; or when, with conjunctions removed, several things are said disconnectedly; or when, passing over something, we show why we do so; or when we correct ourselves as if rebuking; or if there is some exclamation either of wonder or of complaint; or when the cases of the same noun are oftener varied.
But the adornments of thoughts are greater; and because Demosthenes uses these most frequently, there are those who think his eloquence on that account most praiseworthy. And indeed scarcely any passage is spoken by him without some shaping of the thought; nor is to "speak" anything else than to light up all, or at least most, of the thoughts with some figure: which, since you hold most excellently, Brutus, what is the use of employing names or examples? Let the topic only be marked.
Thus, then, will that man whom we seek speak: so that he often turns the same thing in many ways, and sticks fast on one thing, and lingers on the same thought; often, too, so that he extenuates something, often so that he derides it; so that he turns aside from his proposition and deflects the thought; so that he sets forth what he is going to say; so that, when he has now finished something, he defines it; so that he recalls himself; so that he repeats what he has said; so that he concludes an argument by reasoning; so that he presses by questioning; so that again, as if to questions put, he himself answers himself; so that he wishes a thing to be taken and felt contrary to what he says; so that he is in doubt what to say rather, or in what manner; so that he divides into parts; so that he leaves something aside and neglects it; so that he fortifies beforehand; so that, in the very point in which he is blamed, he casts the fault upon his adversary;
so that he often deliberates, as it were, with those who hear, sometimes even with his adversary; so that he describes the talk and manners of men; so that he brings in certain mute things speaking; so that he turns men's minds away from what is being done; so that he often turns the matter to cheerfulness or laughter; so that he seizes beforehand what seems likely to be objected; so that he compares likenesses; so that he uses examples; so that, assigning one thing to one and another to another, he distributes; so that he restrains an interrupter; so that he says he passes something over in silence; so that he warns what men should beware of; so that he ventures something rather freely; so that he even grows angry, so that he chides sometimes; so that he deprecates, so that he supplicates, so that he heals; so that he turns aside somewhat from his proposition; so that he wishes, so that he execrates; so that he becomes familiar with those before whom he speaks.
And he will pursue also other, as it were, virtues of speaking: brevity, if the matter ask it; often, too, he will set the matter before the eyes by his speaking; often he will exalt it beyond what could be; the suggestion will often be greater than the oration; often there will be cheerfulness, often the imitation of life and characters. In this kind—for you see, as it were, a wood—all the greatness of eloquence ought to shine forth.
But these things, unless arranged and, as it were, built and bound together by words, cannot aspire to that praise which we wish. And while I saw that I must speak of this next, although those things which I had said above already moved me, yet by what follows I was the more troubled. For it occurred to me that there might be found not only the envious, of whom all things are full, but even favourers of my praises, who would not deem it the part of that man—of whose services the senate had passed such great judgments, with the Roman people approving, as it had passed of none—to commit to writing so many things about the art of speaking. To whom, if I should answer nothing else than that I had been unwilling to refuse Marcus Brutus when he asked, the excuse would be just, since I had wished to satisfy a man both most friendly and most excellent, asking what was upright and honourable.
But if I should profess—as would that I could!—that I would hand down to the studious of speaking precepts and, as it were, ways that lead to eloquence, who, pray, would any just appraiser of things blame for it? For who has ever doubted that in our commonwealth eloquence has always held the first place in matters civil and peaceful, the second the knowledge of law? Since in the one was the most of favour, glory, protection, in the other the teaching of formulas and precautions—which itself often sought help from eloquence, but, with eloquence resisting, would scarcely defend its own regions and boundaries.
Why, then, has it always been a fair thing to teach the civil law, and the houses of the most distinguished men flourished with disciples—but if anyone whet or aid the young in speaking, should he be reproached? For if it is faulty to speak ornately, let eloquence be driven altogether from the state; but if it not only adorns those who possess it, but also aids the whole commonwealth, why is it base to learn what it is honourable to know, or, what it is most fair to be able to do, not glorious to teach?
"But the one has always been practised, the other is new." I grant it; but there is a cause for each. For of the one it was enough to hear men answering, so that those who taught set apart for themselves no time for that purpose, but at the same time both satisfied the learners and the consulters; the others, since they spent their domestic time in coming to know and arranging cases, their forensic time in pleading them, and all the rest in refreshing themselves, what room had they for instructing or teaching? And I am inclined to think that most of our orators were stronger in genius than in learning; and so they could speak better than teach, we perhaps the contrary.
"But to teach has no dignity." Certainly, if as it were in a school; but if by advising, by exhorting, by questioning, by sharing, by sometimes even reading together, by hearing, you might, somehow, make men better even by teaching something at some time, why would you be unwilling? Or is it honourable to teach with what words the alienation of sacred things is made—but not honourable to teach by what the sacred things themselves can be retained and defended?
"But men profess the law even who do not know it; eloquence, however, even those who have attained it nonetheless dissemble that they have power in it." For this reason, that prudence is welcome to men, the tongue suspected. Can eloquence, then, either lie hidden, or can what it dissembles escape notice, or is there danger that anyone should think it base, in a great and glorious art, to teach others that which it was most honourable for them themselves to have learned?
And perhaps the rest are more covert; I have always avowed openly that I had learned. For how could I, when I had been away from home as a young man and for the sake of these studies had crossed the seas, and my house was crowded with most learned men, and there were perhaps some marks of learning in my conversation, and when my writings were commonly read—how could I dissemble that I had learned? What should I prove, except that I had perhaps profited too little? And though this is so, yet those things which were said above had more dignity in the disputing than those of which we must now speak.
For we shall speak of the composing of words and of the all but counting and measuring of syllables; which, even if they are, as they seem to me, necessary, yet are practised more magnificently than they are taught. That is altogether true, but it is said properly in this place. For the loftiness of all the great arts, as of trees, delights us, but the roots and trunks not so; yet those cannot be without these. As for me, whether that most common verse, which forbids one to be ashamed to profess openly the art one practises, does not suffer me to dissemble that I delight in it, or whether your zeal has wrung this volume from me, yet I had to answer those whom I suspected would blame something.
But if these things which I have said were not so, who nevertheless would show himself so hard and boorish as not to grant me this indulgence: that, when my forensic arts and public pleadings have fallen, I should give myself rather to letters than to idleness—which I cannot do—or to sadness, which I resist? Which formerly led me into the courts and the senate-house, and now delight me at home; nor indeed in such matters only as this book contains, but in far weightier and greater ones too; which, if they shall be perfected, will assuredly answer to our greatest forensic affairs, letters being enclosed within them. But let us return to the disputation we have begun.
Words, then, will be so arranged that either they may cohere among themselves as fitly as possible, the last with the first, and these may be of the sweetest sounds; or that the very form and trimness of the words may complete its own round; or that the period may fall rhythmically and aptly. And let us first see of what sort that is which most of all requires diligence, that there may be made, as it were, a certain structure, and yet not be made laboriously; for that would be at once endless and childish labour; which in Lucilius Scaevola wittily assails in Albucius:
"How prettily your little phrases are set, like all the cubes of art in a pavement and mosaic of inlaid work!"
I would not have this so minute a construction be apparent; yet a practised pen will easily produce the rule of composing. For as in reading the eye, so in speaking the mind will look forward to what follows, lest the clash of the final words with the first that follow them make the sounds either gaping or harsh. For however sweet and weighty the thoughts may be, yet, if they are brought out in words ill-placed, they will offend the ears, whose judgment is most fastidious. Which indeed the Latin tongue so observes that no one is so boorish as to be unwilling to join the vowels.
In which some men even reproach Theopompus, because he shunned those letters with so great pains—although his master Isocrates had done the same; but not Thucydides, nor that far greater writer Plato, and not only in those discourses which are called dialogues, where this even had of set purpose to be done, but in the popular oration in which it is the custom at Athens to praise in the assembly those who have fallen in battles; which oration was so approved that, as you know, it must of necessity be recited every year on that day. In it there is that frequent clashing of vowels, which Demosthenes for the most part avoids as faulty.
But let the Greeks see to it; to us it is not granted, even if we should desire it, to pull the vowels apart. This those somewhat rough orations of Cato show, this all the poets show—except those who, in order to make their verse, often left a gaping hiatus, as Naevius: "You who dwell by the river Hister and the cold," and in the same place: "Whom never to you Greeks and barbarians." But Ennius often: "Unconquered Scipio," and once indeed we ourselves: "By this movement the radiant Etesian winds onto the shallows of the sea."
This same thing our countrymen would not have borne the more often, which the Greeks are even wont to praise. But why do I speak of vowels? Without vowels they often contracted words for brevity's sake, so that they said "multi' modis," "in vas' argenteis," "palmi' crinibus," "tecti' fractis." But what more licentious than that they contracted even the names of men, that they might be the more fitting? For as "bellum" for "duellum," "bis" for "duis," so the man who conquered the Carthaginians by his fleet, "Duellius," they named "Bellius," though his ancestors had always been called "Duellii." Nay, words too are often contracted not for use but for the ears. For how was your "Axilla" made "Ala," except by the flight of a too-wide letter? Which letter the elegant usage of Latin speech plucks out also from "maxillae" and "taxilli" and "paxillus" and "vexillum."
They were glad, too, to join words by coupling, as "sodes" for "si audes," "sis" for "si vis." Now in the single "capsis" there are three words. "Ain" for "aisne," "nequire" for "non quire," "malle" for "magis velle," "nolle" for "non velle"; and then too we often say "dein" and "exin" for "deinde" and "exinde." Why, does it not betray its origin, that we say "cum illis" but do not say "cum nobis," but "nobiscum"? Because, if it were so said, the letters would clash too obscenely—as just now, had I not interposed "autem," they would have clashed. From this it is "mecum" and "tecum," not "cum me" and "cum te," so that it might be like those, "nobiscum" and "vobiscum."
And even antiquity is now, somewhat late, corrected by certain men, who blame these things. For instead of "deum atque hominum fidem" they say "deorum." So, I suppose, those men did not know this: or did usage allow this licence? And so that same poet who had contracted somewhat unusually: "Of my father I am ashamed of my deed" for "of my deeds," and "It is woven, the swarm of destruction snatches it" for "of destructions," does not say "liberum," as most of us say, when we say "fond of children" or "in place of children," but as those men wish: "Nor ever raise into your bosom from yourself a race of children," and the same: "For of Aesculapius the children." But that other in the Chryses not only: "Citizens, ancient friends of my ancestors," which was customary, but even more harshly: "the counsel of allies, interpreters of augury and entrails"; and the same goes on: "after the horrible prodigy, the dread portent"; which are by no means usual in all neuter plurals. For I would not so gladly say "the judgment of arms"—though it is in the same poet: "Has nothing reached you about the judgment of arms?"—as "the company of smiths and of suitors,"
as the censors' tablets speak; I dare to say it, not "of smiths" or "of suitors"; and plainly I say "the judgment of two men," or "of the three capital commissioners," or "of the ten men for adjudging suits," never otherwise. And what did Accius say? "I see two tombs of two bodies"; and the same: "one woman of two men." I understand what is true; but sometimes I speak as is allowed, as I say this "of gods" or "of the gods"; sometimes as is necessary, when I say "of three men," not "of three men" in full, and "of sesterces," not "of sestertia of coins," because in these usage is not various.
What of this, that they forbid us to say "nosse," "iudicasse," and bid us say "novisse" and "iudicavisse"? As if we did not know that in this kind both the full word is rightly said and the shortened one is customary. And so Terence uses both: "Ho there, did you not know your kinsman?" and afterward the same: "You had known Stilpo, I say." "Sient" is full, "sint" shortened; you may use either. So in the same place: "how dear they are, men learn afterward by lacking them," and "how great the lordships of keeping-back may be." Nor indeed would I blame "they wrote, others, the matter," and I feel "they wrote" is the truer; but I gladly obey usage, indulgent to the ears. "The same plain holds them," says Ennius; and in the temples: "THE SAME APPROVED IT"; yet "isdem" was the truer, and not "eisdem" as the richer; "isdem" sounded ill: it was obtained from usage that one might err for the sake of sweetness. And I would more gladly say "afternoon four-horse teams" than "afternoon four-yoked," and by Hercules "me hercule" rather than "me hercules." "Non scire" now seems barbarous, "nescire" is sweeter. Why not "medidies" for "meridies" itself?
Because, I suppose, it was less sweet. There is one preposition "af," which now remains only in the books of accounts—and not in all of these either—but in the rest of speech is changed; for we say "amovit" and "abegit" and "abstulit," so that you would not know whether "a" be the true form, or "ab," or "abs." What of the fact that even "abfugit" seemed base and they would not have "abfer," but preferred "aufugit" and "aufer"? Which preposition, besides these two words, will be found in no other word. There were "noti" and "navi" and "nari," to which, when "in" ought to be prefixed, it seemed sweeter to say "ignotos," "ignavos," "ignaros" than as truth demanded. They say "ex usu" and "e re publica," because in the one a vowel followed, in the other there would be harshness, unless you took away the letter, as "exegit," "edixit"; "refecit," "rettulit," "reddidit"—the first letter of the joined word changed the preposition, as "subegit," "summovit," "sustulit."
What in joined words? How cleverly "insipientem," not "insapientem"; "iniquum," not "inaequum"; "tricipitem," not "tricapitem"; "concisum," not "concaesum"! From which some even wish for "pertisum," which the same usage did not approve. But what more elegant than this, which comes not by nature but by a certain convention? We say "indoctus" with the first letter short, "insanus" with it lengthened; "inhumanus" short, "infelix" long. And, not to be long, in those words in which the first letters are those that are in "sapiens" and "felix," it is pronounced long; in all the rest, short; and likewise "composuit," "consuevit," "concrepuit," "confecit." Consult truth: it will censure; refer to the ears: they will approve. Ask why it is so: they will say it pleases. But oratory ought to humour the pleasure of the ears.
Nay, I myself, though I knew that our ancestors so spoke as to use the aspirate nowhere but in a vowel, used to speak so as to say "pulcros," "Cetegos," "triumpos," "Cartaginem"; at length, and that late, when, by the reproach of the ears, the truth had been wrested from me, I yielded the usage of speaking to the people, and reserved the knowledge to myself. Yet we say "Orcivii," "Matones," "Otones," "Caepiones," "sepulcra," "coronas," "lacrimas," because it is allowed by the judgment of the ears. Ennius always "Burrus," never "Pyrrhus"; "By force the Bruges threw open," not "Phryges," his own ancient books declare. For they did not use the Greek letter, but now we use even two; and since one had to say "of the Phrygians" and "to the Phrygians," it was absurd either to use the Greek letter even in the barbarian cases, or to speak Greek only in the direct case; yet we say both "Phryges" and "Pyrrhum" for the ears' sake.
Nay, even—what now seems somewhat rustic, but of old was the more polished—of those words whose last two letters were the same as those in "optimus," they used to take away the final letter, unless a vowel followed. So there was not in the verses that offence which the new poets now shun. For thus we spoke: "who of all is first," not "of all first," and: "worthy of that life and place," not "worthy." But if unlearned usage is so artful a maker of sweetness, what, pray, do we think is to be demanded of art and learning themselves?
These things I have said more briefly than if I were disputing of this matter alone—for this is a topic that lies far open, concerning the nature and use of words—but at greater length than the rule I set myself demanded. But since the judgment of matters and words lies in discernment, while of sounds and rhythms the ears are judges, and because the former are referred to the understanding, the latter to pleasure, in the one reason finds the art, in the other the sense. For either the will of the ears, by which we strove to win approval, had to be neglected by us, or the art of winning it had to be discovered.
There are, then, two things which soothe the ears: sound and rhythm. Of rhythm presently; now we inquire of sound. Words, as we said above, are to be chosen most of all such as sound well, but not, as the poets do, sought-out for the sound, but taken from the common stock. "Where the sea of Helle, above Tmolus and the Tauric land": the verse is lit up by the splendid names of places, but the next is befouled by a most unsweet letter: "holds the bounds of fruitful and overflowing fields of Asia."
Wherefore let us use rather the goodness of our own words than the splendour of the Greek—unless perhaps we are ashamed to speak thus: "At the season when Helen Paris," and what follows. Nay rather, let us follow that, and shun harshness: "I have this terror-rattling thing," and likewise: "the craft-speaking malices." Nor only will words be composed by reason, but also brought to a close, since we have said that this is the other judgment of the ears. And they are brought to a close either by the very composition and, as it were, of their own accord, or by a certain kind of words in which there is inherent trimness; which, whether they have like cases in the ending, or like is rendered for like, or contraries are opposed, are by their own nature rhythmical, even if nothing has been done of set purpose.
In the pursuit of this trimness we have received that Gorgias was the chief; of which kind are those words of ours in the speech for Milo: "For this, judges, is a law not written but born, which we have not learned, received, read, but which we have seized, drawn, expressed from Nature herself; for which we were not taught but made, not instructed but imbued." For these things are such that, because they are referred to that to which they ought to be referred, we understand that the rhythm was not sought but followed.
This is done likewise in the matching of contraries, as are those things by which not only rhythmical oratory but even verse is produced: "Her whom you accuse of nothing you condemn"—he would have said "condemn" with the other word who wished to escape the verse—"her whom you declare to have deserved well do you ill-deserve of? What you know profits nothing; what you do not know harms?" The matching of contraries itself makes a verse. The same would be rhythmical in prose: "what you know profits nothing; what you do not know harms much." These things, which the Greeks call antitheta, when contraries are opposed to contraries, of necessity itself produce the oratorical rhythm even without industry.
By this kind the ancients were delighted even before Isocrates, and most of all Gorgias, in whose oratory the trimness itself for the most part produces the rhythm. We too are frequent in this kind, as are those things in the fourth book of the accusation: "Compare this peace with that war, the coming of this praetor with the victory of that general, the impure cohort of this man with the unconquered army of that, the lusts of this man with the continence of that: you will say that Syracuse, which the one who took it founded, was, when the other received it established, taken captive."
Let these rhythms, then, be known, and let that third kind be unfolded, of what sort it is—the rhythmical and apt oration. Those who do not feel this, what ears they have, or what there is in them like a man's, I do not know. Mine, at least, both rejoice in a perfect and full round of words and feel what is cut short, and do not love what is redundant. Why do I say "mine"? I have often seen the assemblies cry out aloud when the words have fallen aptly. For this the ears expect, that the thought be bound up by the words. "This was not so among the ancients." And indeed there was almost nothing else that was not; for they both chose words and found weighty and sweet thoughts, but they either bound them up or filled them out too little.
"This very thing delights me," they say. What if that most ancient painting of few colours delight one more than this now perfected—is that, I suppose, to be sought again by us, and this, of course, to be rejected? They glory in the names of the ancients. But as in ages old age has authority, so in examples antiquity has it, which indeed has the greatest weight with me myself. Nor do I clamour for what is wanting to antiquity rather than praise what is there; especially since I judge that what is there is greater than what is wanting. For there is more of good in the words and in the thoughts, in which those men excel, than in the close of the thoughts, which they have not. The close was discovered later, which, I believe, those ancients would have used, had the thing been already known and practised; and now that it is discovered, we see all great orators using it.
But the name has odium attached to it, when rhythm is said to be inherent in judicial and forensic oratory. For too much of ambush seems to be brought to bear for capturing the ears, if even in speaking rhythms are sought by the orator. Relying on this, those very men both speak in a broken and lopped-off way, and reproach those who pronounce aptly and finishedly; if with empty words and trivial thoughts, justly; but if the matters be sound, the words chosen, what reason is there why they should prefer to limp and halt rather than to run on level with the thought? For this much-envied rhythm brings nothing else than that the thought be aptly comprehended in words; which is done even by the ancients, but for the most part by chance, often by nature; and those things which are greatly praised in them are praised generally because they are rounded off.
And among the Greeks indeed it is now nearly four hundred years since this has been approved; we have recognized it but lately. Therefore it was allowed to Ennius, despising the old, to say: "in verses which once the Fauns and bards used to sing"; shall it not be allowed me to speak of the ancients in the same way? Especially since I am not going to say, as he did, "before this man," nor what follows: "We dared to unlock"—for I have both pleaded and heard not a few men whose oratory was rounded off almost faultlessly. And those who cannot do this, it is not enough for them not to be despised; they wish even to be praised. But I myself praise those very men—and deservedly—whose imitators these men say they are, although in them I miss something; but these men by no means, who follow nothing of those save the fault, while they are furthest of all from their good qualities.
But if they have ears so inhuman and so boorish, will not even the authority of the most learned men move them? I pass over Isocrates and his disciples Ephorus and Naucrates—although the authors for making and adorning oratory, the richest and the supreme orators themselves, ought to have been such. But who of all was more learned, who keener, who in things either to be found or to be judged sharper, than Aristotle? Who, moreover, was more bitterly opposed to Isocrates? He, then, forbids verse to be in oratory, and bids rhythm. His hearer Theodectes, in the first rank, as Aristotle often signifies, a polished writer and craftsman, both feels and teaches this same thing; Theophrastus, indeed, on these same matters even more accurately. Who, then, would endure those who do not approve these authorities? Unless indeed they are altogether ignorant that these precepts come from them.
And if it is so—nor do I think otherwise—what then? Are they themselves not moved by their own senses? Does nothing seem to them empty, nothing ill-built, nothing cut short, nothing limping, nothing redundant? In verse, indeed, whole theatres cry out, if there has been one syllable too short or too long; nor does the multitude know the feet, nor hold any rhythms, nor understand what it is that offends, or care, or in what it is offended; and yet of all the lengths and shortnesses in sounds, as of high and low tones, Nature herself has placed the judgment in our ears.
Are you willing, then, Brutus, that we unfold this whole topic even more accurately than those very men who handed down both these and other things to us, or can we be content with what has been said by them? But why do I ask whether you are willing, when from your most learnedly written letters I have perceived that you wish this most of all? First, then, the origin; next, the cause; afterward, the nature; then, at the last, the very use of apt and rhythmical oratory shall be unfolded.
For those who most admire Isocrates set this among his highest praises, that he first joined rhythms to loosed words. For when he saw that orators were heard with severity, but poets with pleasure, then, it is said, he pursued rhythms, which he might use even in oratory, both for the sake of pleasantness and that variety might meet satiety.
Which is said by them in a certain part truly, not wholly. For it must be confessed that no one was more skilfully versed in that kind than Isocrates; but the chief in invention was Thrasymachus, all of whose writings are even too rhythmical. For, as I said a little before, equals joined to equals and ending alike, and likewise contraries matched with contraries, which of their own accord, even if you do not aim at it, for the most part fall rhythmically—these Gorgias first discovered, but used them too intemperately. Now that is the kind, as was said before, which is the second of the three parts of arrangement.
Both of these go before Isocrates in age, so that he surpassed them by moderation, not by invention. For he is, as in transferring and making words more tranquil, so in the very rhythms more sedate. But Gorgias is more greedy of that kind, and uses these festive devices—for so he himself reckons them—too insolently; which Isocrates, however, when as a young man he had heard Gorgias, already an old man, in Thessaly, tempered more moderately. Nay, he himself, as far as he advanced in age—for he completed nearly a hundred years—relaxed from the excessive constraint of rhythms; which he declares in that book which he wrote to Philip of Macedon, when he was now quite old; in which he says that he is now less in bondage to rhythms than he had been wont. Thus he had corrected not only his predecessors but even himself.
Since, then, we have those leaders and authors of apt oratory whom we have named, and the origin has been found, let the cause be sought. Which is so plain that I marvel the ancients were not stirred—especially since, as happens, they often by chance said something close-knit and apt. And when this had struck men's minds and ears, so that it could be understood that what chance had poured forth had fallen pleasantly, surely the kind was to be marked, and they were to imitate themselves. For the ears themselves, or the mind by the report of the ears, contain within them a certain natural measuring of all sounds.
And so they judge both the longer and the shorter, and always expect the perfect and measured; they feel certain things maimed and, as it were, docked, by which, defrauded as of a debt, they are offended; others too drawn-out and, as it were, running on immoderately, which the ears reject even more; for, as in most things, so in this kind, what is too much offends more vehemently than what seems too little. As, therefore, the verse of poetry was discovered by the terminating of the ears, by the observation of the discerning, so in oratory there was noted—much later, indeed, but with the same Nature admonishing—that there are certain fixed runs and closings of words.
Since, then, we have shown the cause too, let us now, if you please, unfold the nature—for that was the third thing; which disputation is not of this kind of discourse we have undertaken, but of the inmost art. For it can be asked what the rhythm of oratory is, and where it is placed, and born of what, and whether it is one or two or more, and by what method it is composed, and to what end, and when, and in what place, and in what manner applied it brings some pleasure.
But as in most matters, so in this there is a twofold way of considering, of which one is longer, the other shorter and also plainer. Now of the longer the first question is whether there be any rhythmical oratory at all; for to some it does not seem so, because there is nothing fixed in it as in verse, and because those very men who affirm that these rhythms exist cannot render the reason why they exist. Next, if there be rhythm in oratory, of what sort it is, or what sorts, and whether from poetic rhythms or from some other kind, and, if from the poetic, which of them or what kind; for to some only one seems the same, to others several, to others all. Next, whatever they are, whether one or several, whether they are common to every kind of oratory—since one kind is of narrating, another of persuading, another of teaching—or whether unlike rhythms are suited to each kind of oratory; if common, which they are; if unlike, what the difference is, and why rhythm does not appear equally in oratory and in verse.
Next, that which is called rhythmical in oratory, whether it is produced by rhythm alone, or also by a certain composition or kind of words; or whether each has its own, so that rhythm appears in the intervals, composition in the sounds, the very kind of words by a certain form and light of oratory, and whether the fount of all is composition, and from it are produced both rhythm and those things which are called, as it were, the forms and lights of oratory, which, as I said, the Greeks call schemata.
But it is not one and the same thing that is pleasant to the voice, and that which is perfected by measure, and that which is lit up by the kind of words; though this last indeed is near to rhythm, because it is for the most part of itself perfect; composition, however, differs from both, since it wholly serves the weight or sweetness of the sounds. These, then, are about the matters in which the nature of the thing is to be sought.
That there is, therefore, a certain rhythm in oratory is not difficult to know. For the sense judges it; in which it is unjust not to acknowledge what happens, if we cannot find why it happens. For not even verse itself was known by reason, but by nature and sense, which reason afterward, by measuring, taught what was happening. Thus the marking of nature and observation begot art. But in verse the matter is plainer—although even oratory, with the chant removed by certain measures, seems to be loosed, and that most of all in the best of those poets who are called by the Greeks lyric, whom, when you have stripped them of the chant, almost naked oratory remains.
Things like these are found even among our own, as those in the Thyestes: "Who, pray, shall I say you are? who in slow old age," and what follows; which, except when the flute-player has come in, are most like loosed oratory. But the senarii of the comic poets, on account of their likeness to ordinary talk, are often so cast down that sometimes the rhythm and verse can scarcely be perceived in them. Whence rhythm is harder to find in oratory than in verse.
There are, in all, two things which season oratory: the pleasantness of words and of rhythms. In words there is, as it were, a certain matter; in rhythm, however, the polishing. But, as in other matters, the inventions of necessity are older than those of pleasure—
for what is both easier and more necessary is always known first—so transferred or made or joined words were easily known, because they were taken from common and everyday talk. Rhythm, however, was not drawn from home, nor had it any necessity or kinship with oratory. And so, noted and known somewhat later, it brought to oratory, as it were, a certain wrestling-school and final outlines.
But if there is one oratory somewhat narrow and chopped up, and another widened and poured-out, it must be that this happens not by the nature of the letters but by the variety of long and short intervals; by which, oratory being entangled and intermixed, since it is now stable, now voluble, it must be that the nature of rhythm is contained in a force of this kind. For that circuit, of which we have already often spoken, is borne along and glides the more impetuously by the rhythm itself, until it reaches its end and takes its stand. It is plain, then, that oratory ought to be bound by rhythms, but to be without verses.
But whether these rhythms are poetic, or from some other kind, is next to be seen. There is, then, no rhythm outside the poetic, for the kinds of rhythms are fixed. For every such rhythm is so constituted that it is one of three. For the foot, which is brought to bear on rhythms, is divided into three, so that it is necessary that one part of the foot be either equal to the other part, or twice as great, or half again as great. Thus the dactyl is equal, the iambus double, the paean half-again; and how can these feet not fall into oratory? When these are set in order, what is produced must of necessity be rhythmical.
But it is asked by what rhythm, or which especially, one should use. That all fall into oratory can be understood even from this, that we often through inadvertence speak verses in oratory. This is vehemently faulty, but we do not attend to it nor hear ourselves; senarii indeed and Hipponacteans we can scarcely escape, for our oratory consists for a great part of iambs. But yet the hearer easily recognizes those verses, for they are most familiar; we, however, through inadvertence often crowd in even less familiar ones, but verses nonetheless: a faulty kind, and to be shunned by long forethought of the mind.
Hieronymus the Peripatetic, a man noble among the first, chose out of the many books of Isocrates perhaps thirty verses, most of them senarii, but also anapaests; than which what can be baser? Although in his reading he acted maliciously; for, taking away the first syllable from the first word of a thought, he joined to the last word the first syllable again of the following thought; thus was made that anapaest which is called Aristophanean; which, that it may not happen, can neither be guarded against nor is it necessary. But yet this corrector, in that very place where he censures—as was noted by me, who eagerly inquired into him—himself unwittingly thrusts in a senarius. Let this, then, be acknowledged, that rhythms are present even in loosed words, and that the same are oratorical which are poetic.
It follows, therefore, that we must see which rhythms fall most into apt oratory. For there are those who think the iambic, because it is most like oratory—for which cause it comes about that it especially, on account of its likeness to the truth, is used in plays—while that dactylic rhythm of hexameters is more suited to grand-speaking. Ephorus, however—himself a smooth orator, and one who came forth from the best discipline—pursues the paean or the dactyl, but shuns the spondee and the trochee. For because the paean had three short syllables, the dactyl two, by the shortness and swiftness of the syllables he thinks the words glide more readily; and the contrary happens in the spondee and the trochee, of which, because the one consists of long syllables, the other of short, oratory becomes in the one case too impetuous, in the other too slow, and in neither tempered.
But both those former men err, and Ephorus is at fault. For those who pass over the paean do not see that the softest rhythm, and the same the amplest, is passed over by them. Which seems to Aristotle far otherwise, who judges the heroic rhythm grander than loosed oratory requires, but the iamb too much of common talk. Thus he approves neither a lowly and abject oratory nor one too lofty and exaggerated, yet wishes it to be full of weight, so that it can carry those who hear over to greater admiration.
The trochee, however, which is of the same span as the choreus, he calls the cordax, because contraction and shortness have no dignity. Thus he approves the paean, and says all use it, but do not themselves perceive it when they use it; and that it is a third thing, and a middle, between those; and that those feet are so constituted that in each single one there is a measure either half-again, or double, or equal. And so those of whom I spoke before took account only of convenience, none of dignity.
For the iamb and the dactyl fall most of all into verse; and so, as we shun verse in oratory, so these feet, continued, are to be avoided; for oratory is something different, and nothing more hostile to it than that which belongs to verses; the paean, however, is least apt for verse, wherefore oratory the more gladly received it. But Ephorus does not understand that even the spondee, which he shuns, is equal to the dactyl, which he approves. For he thinks feet are to be measured by syllables, not by intervals; which he does likewise in the trochee, which is, in times and intervals, equal to the iamb, but faulty in oratory if it be set at the end, because words fall better into longer syllables. And these things, which are in Aristotle, are said by Theophrastus and Theodectes about the paean in the same way.
But for my part I feel that all the feet are, as it were, mixed and confused in oratory; for we could not escape notice if we always used the same, because oratory ought neither to be rhythmical like a poem, nor outside rhythm like the talk of the crowd—the one is too bound, so that it appears to be done of set purpose, the other too loosed, so that it seems vagabond and vulgar; so that by the one you are not delighted, the other you would hate—;
let it be, then, as I said above, mixed and tempered with rhythms, neither loosed nor wholly rhythmical, most of all with the paean, since the best authority so judges, but tempered also with the rest of the rhythms, which he passes over.
But now it must be said which rhythms ought to be mixed with which, like purple, and also to which kinds of oratory each is most suited. For the iamb is most frequent in those things which are said in a lowered and humble style;
the paean, however, in the ampler; in both the dactyl. And so in varied and continuous oratory these are to be mixed and tempered among themselves. Thus the hunting after delight and the industry of squaring off the oratory will least be noticed; which will lie hidden the more, if we use the weights both of words and of thoughts. For those who hear notice these two things and reckon them pleasant to themselves—the words, I mean, and the thoughts—and while with attentive minds, admiring, they take them in, the rhythm escapes and flies past them; which yet, if it were absent, those very things would delight less.
Nor indeed is the run of rhythms—of oratory, I mean, for it is far otherwise in verse—such that nothing is done outside measure; for that indeed would be a poem; but all oratory that walks evenly and steadily, neither limping nor, as it were, wavering, is held to be rhythmical. And that is thought rhythmical in speaking, not which wholly consists of rhythms, but which comes nearest to rhythms; whereby it is even harder to use oratory than verse, because in the latter there is a certain fixed and defined law, which it is necessary to follow; in speaking, however, nothing is proposed save that the oratory be not immoderate, or narrow, or loosed, or flowing. And so there are not in it, as for the flute-player, the measures of beats, but the whole comprehension and form of the oratory is rounded off and terminated, which is judged by the pleasure of the ears.
But it is usual to ask whether rhythms are to be kept throughout the whole round of words, or in the first parts and in the last; for most men think that one need only fall rhythmically and terminate the thought. But it is so, that this is most becoming, not that it is the only thing; for that round must be set down, not cast away. Wherefore, since the ears always expect the end and rest upon it, that ought not to be void of rhythm, but to this end already from the beginning that comprehension of words ought to be borne, and the whole, from the head, so to flow that, coming to the end, it of itself comes to a stand.
But this, to men exercised in a good discipline, who have both written much and have made whatever they say even without writing like to written things, will not be very difficult. For first the thought is circumscribed in the mind, and at once the words run together, which that same mind—than which nothing is swifter—straightway sends off, so that each answers in its own place; whose distributed order is closed off, now by one termination, now by another. And all those words, both the first and the middle, ought to look to the last.
For at times the run in oratory is more impetuous, at times a measured entry, so that already from the beginning it must be seen in what manner you wish to come to the end. Nor in rhythms more than in the other adornments of oratory, though we do the same things as the poets, do we yet escape, in oratory, the likeness of a poem. For in each there is both matter and handling: matter in the words, handling in the arrangement of words. And of each there are three parts: of words, the transferred, the new, the ancient—for of the proper we say nothing in this place—; of arrangement, those which we have named, composition, trimness, rhythm.
But in each the poets are more frequent and more free; for they both transfer words more often and even more boldly, and use the ancient more gladly and the new more freely. The same happens in rhythms, in which they are compelled, as it were, to obey necessity. Yet it may be understood that these things are neither too diverse nor in no way joined. Thus it comes about that rhythm appears not in the same way in oratory as in verse, and that what is called rhythmical in oratory is not always made by rhythm, but sometimes by trimness or by the construction of words.
So, if it is asked what the rhythm of oratory is, it is all rhythm, but one is better and apter than another; if where it is, in every part of the words; if whence it has sprung, from the pleasure of the ears; if the method of composing it, that will be said in another place, because it pertains to use, which was the fourth and last part in our dividing; if to what end it is brought to bear, to delight; if when, always; if in what place, in the whole continuation of words; if what it is that produces the pleasure, the same as in verses, whose measure art notes, but the ears themselves, by a silent sense, define without art.
Enough of the nature; the use follows, of which we must dispute more accurately. In which it has been asked whether rhythm is to be kept in that whole round of oratory, which the Greeks call period, and we call now ambitus, now circuitus, now comprehensio or continuatio or circumscriptio, or in the beginnings only, or in the ends, or in both parts; then, since rhythm seems to be one thing, rhythmical another, what the difference is.
Then, whether it is becoming to cut up the little parts equally in all rhythms, or to make some shorter, some longer, and when or why that should be; and in which parts, whether several or single, unequal or equal, and when one is to use either these or those; and which are most aptly arranged among themselves and in what manner, or whether there is no distinction at all in that kind; and—what most of all pertains to the matter—by what method oratory is made rhythmical.
It must also be unfolded whence the form of words has arisen, and it must be said how large a circuit it is becoming to make, and we must discourse of their little parts and, as it were, sections, and inquire whether there is one kind and length of them or several, and, if several, in what place or when and of what kind it is becoming to use each. Lastly, the usefulness of the whole kind must be unfolded, which indeed lies more widely open; for it is fitted not to some one thing alone, but to several.
And it is permitted, without answering to each single point, so to speak of the whole kind that the single points too may seem to have been sufficiently answered. The other kinds, then, being set aside, we have chosen this one alone of which to speak—the one that is engaged in cases and in the forum. Therefore in the others—that is, in history and in that which we call epideictic—it is decided that all be said in the Isocratean and Theopompean manner, with that circumscription and round, so that oratory may run as if enclosed in a circle, until it takes its stand in single perfect and finished thoughts.
And so, after this circumscription, or comprehension, or continuation, or round was born, if it is permitted so to speak, no one who was of any account wrote oratory of that kind which was prepared for delight and removed from judicial and forensic contest, but that he reduced almost all his thoughts to a square and a rhythm. For when the hearer is one who does not fear that his good faith may be assailed by the snares of composed oratory, he even feels gratitude toward the orator who serves the pleasure of the ears.
But this kind of oratory is neither wholly to be taken up for forensic cases nor altogether to be rejected; for if you use it always, it both brings satiety and is recognized for what it is even by the unskilled; it takes away, besides, the grief of the pleading, removes the human feeling of the hearer, and utterly destroys truth and good faith. But since it must sometimes be applied, first it is to be seen in what place, then how long it is to be retained, then in how many ways it is to be varied.
Rhythmical oratory, then, is to be applied if either something is to be praised more ornately—as we did in the second book of the accusation about the praise of Sicily, as in the senate about my own consulship—or a narrative is to be set forth which requires more of dignity than of grief, as in the fourth book of the accusation we spoke about the Hennensian Ceres, about the Segestan Diana, about the situation of Syracuse. Often, too, in amplifying a matter, by the consent of all, oratory is poured forth rhythmically and volubly. This we perhaps have not perfected, but have very often attempted; which in very many places our perorations declare that we wished and strove for in mind. But this avails when he who hears is already, as it were, besieged by the orator and held. For he does not act so as to lie in wait and watch, but already favours, and wishes the advance, and, admiring the force of the speaking, does not seek out what to censure.
But this form is not long to be retained—and I mean not in the peroration, which itself encloses it, but in the rest of the parts of the oration. For when you have used those passages in which I have shown that it is permitted, the whole diction must be transferred to those things which—I know not why, when the Greeks name them kommata and kola—we do not rightly call incisa and membra. For there cannot be known names for unknown things; but since we are wont to transfer words either for sweetness or for poverty, this happens in all arts, that, when something is to be named which, on account of ignorance of the things themselves, had before no name, necessity compels us either to make a new word or to borrow from a like one.
But in what manner it is becoming to speak by clauses and by members we shall presently see; now it must be said in how many ways comprehensions and conclusions are varied. Rhythm flows altogether from the beginning, now more impetuously by the shortness of the feet, now more slowly by their length. Vehement passages require a run, expositions of matters require slowness. But the round comes to a stand by several measures, of which Asia most followed one, which is called the dichoreus, when there are two final choreuses, that is, each made of a long and a short. For it must be explained, since by some the same feet are called by other names.
The dichoreus is not indeed of itself faulty in closings, but in the rhythm of oratory there is nothing so faulty as if the same is always used. Now that very foot falls of itself splendidly, wherefore satiety is the more to be feared. While I was standing by, Gaius Carbo, son of Gaius, tribune of the plebs, said in the assembly in these words: "O Marcus Drusus, I appeal to your father"—these two by twos in feet, by clauses; then by members: "you used to say that the commonwealth was a sacred thing"—these likewise are members, in threes; afterward the round:
"whoever had violated it, the penalties were paid to him by all"—a dichoreus; for it is nothing to the matter whether that final syllable be long or short; then: "your father's saying your wise rashness, son, confirmed"—at this dichoreus so great an outcry of the assembly was raised that it was wonderful. I ask: did not the rhythm produce it? Change the order of the words, make it thus: "confirmed your son's rashness," and now it will be nothing—although "temeritas" is of three short syllables and a long, which Aristotle approves as the best, from whom I dissent. "But the same words, the same thought."
For the mind that is enough, for the ears not enough. But this ought not to be done too frequently; for first the rhythm is recognized, then it sates, afterward, when its facility is known, it is despised.
But there are several closings that fall rhythmically and pleasantly. For both the cretic, which is of a long and a short and a long, and its equal the paean, which is equal in span, a syllable longer, are thought most fitly to be bound into loosed oratory, since it is double. For it is either of a long and three shorts, which rhythm is vigorous at the beginning, lies dead at the end, or of as many shorts and a long, which the ancients judge to fall best; I do not plainly reject it, but prefer others.
Not even the spondee is utterly to be rejected, although, because it is of two longs, it seems duller and slower; yet it has a certain stable step, not devoid of dignity—in clauses, indeed, and in members, much more so; for it makes up for the fewness of its feet by its own weight and slowness. But when I name these feet in closings, I do not speak of one final foot: I add, what is the least, the next one above, often even the third.
Not even the iamb, which is of a short and a long, or—equal to the choreus, which has three shorts, the trochee, equal in span, not in syllables—or even the dactyl, which is of a long and two shorts, if it be next from the last, arrives smoothly enough at the end, if the last be a choreus or a spondee; for it never matters which of these be in the final foot. But these same three feet conclude badly, if any one of them be set at the end, except when, in place of a cretic, the last is a dactyl; for it matters nothing whether a dactyl be at the end or a cretic, because whether the last syllable be short or long does not matter even in verse.
Wherefore he too who said the paean was apter, in which the last syllable was long, saw too little, since it is nothing to the matter how long the last be. Now the paean, because it has more syllables than three, is held by some to be a rhythm, not a foot. It is indeed—as is agreed among all the ancients, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Theodectes, Ephorus—the one most apt for oratory either at the beginning or in the middle; they think it apt even at the close, in which place the cretic seems to me apter. The dochmius, however, of five syllables—a short, two longs, a short, a long, as is this: "you hold your friends"—is apt in any place, provided it be set down once: repeated or continued it makes the rhythm open and too conspicuous.
If, then, we use these so many and so various changes, neither will it be detected manifestly what we do of set purpose, and satiety will be met. And because rhythmical oratory is made not by rhythm alone but also by composition and by the kind of trimness which was spoken of before—by composition it can be understood, when words are so built that the rhythm seems not sought but to have followed of itself, as in Crassus: "For where lust rules, there is a slight guard for innocence"; for the order of the words produces the rhythm without any open industry of the orator—and so, if those ancients—Herodotus, I mean, and Thucydides, and that whole age—said anything aptly and rhythmically, those things fell not by sought rhythm but by the arrangement of words.
But there are certain forms of oratory in which there is such trimness that rhythm follows of necessity. For when either equal is rendered for equal, or contrary opposed to contrary, or words that fall alike are matched with words, whatever is so concluded for the most part falls rhythmically—of which kind, with examples, we have spoken above; so that this abundance too may bring the faculty of not always ending in the same manner. Nor yet are these things so tight and bound that we cannot, when we wish, loosen them. There is much difference whether oratory is rhythmical—that is, like rhythms—or plainly consists of rhythms; the latter, if it happens, is an intolerable fault, the former, unless it happens, the oratory is scattered and uncultivated and flowing.
But since not only not frequently but even rarely, in true cases or forensic ones, one must speak circumscribedly and rhythmically, it seems to follow that we should see what those things are which I called above incisa and membra. For these hold the greatest part of the oratory in true cases. For that round and full comprehension consists of about four parts, which we call members, so that it both fills the ear and is neither shorter than is enough nor longer. Although each happens sometimes—or rather often—either that one must stop sooner or proceed further, lest brevity seem to have defrauded the ears or length to have dulled them. But I have the reckoning of moderation; for I am not speaking of verse, and oratory is somewhat freer.
In these single members, then, there appear, as it were, the knots of the continuation, which we join in the round. But if we wish to speak by members, we make a stop, and, when there is need, easily and often disjoin ourselves from that much-envied run. But nothing ought to be so rhythmical as this, which least appears and avails most. Of this kind is that of Crassus: "Let them dismiss their patrons; let them themselves come forward"—had he not, with an interval, said "let them themselves come forward," he would surely have felt that he had poured out a senarius; altogether it would fall better, "let them come forward themselves"; but I am now disputing of the kind;—
"why do they attack us with hidden counsels? why do they prepare forces of deserters against us?" The first two are those which the Greeks call kommata, we call incisa; then the third the Greeks call kolon, we membrum; there follows a not long comprehension—for of two verses, that is, members, the comprehension is perfected and falls into spondees; and Crassus indeed for the most part spoke thus, and I myself most approve that kind of speaking. But those things which are brought out by clauses or by members ought to fall most aptly, as it is in me: "Was a house lacking to you? but you had one. Was money over and above? but you were in want;"
these are said by clauses, four of them; but by members those two that follow: "you ran madly upon the columns, you raged insanely against another's property." Then all is sustained, as if by a certain base, by a longer comprehension: "you have valued that sunk, blind, prostrate house at more than yourself and than your fortunes." It is ended by a dichoreus. But that other, by spondees. For in those, which one ought to use like little daggers, brevity itself will make the feet freer; for often single feet are to be used, for the most part double, and to each may be added a part of a foot, scarcely ever more than three.
But oratory handled by clauses and by members avails most in true cases, and most of all in those places where you either accuse or refute, as we did in the second book of the Cornelian: "O cunning men! O thing devised! O talents to be feared!" By members thus far; then by cuttings: "we said"; again by members: "we wish to bring witnesses." There follows the final comprehension, but of two members, than which there can be none shorter: "Who, pray, of us did not see that you would do thus?"
And there is no kind of speaking either better or stronger than to strike by twos or threes of words, sometimes by single ones, a little otherwise by more, among which, with varied closings, rhythmical comprehension rarely interposes itself; which Hegesias, perversely shunning, while he too wishes to imitate Lysias, almost a second Demosthenes, leaps about, cutting up little parts. And he indeed errs no less in his thoughts than in his words, so that whoever has known him need not seek whom to call inept. But I have set down those things of Crassus and of mine, that whoever wished might judge by the ears themselves what is rhythmical even in the smallest little parts of oratory. And since we have said more about rhythmical oratory than anyone before us, now we shall speak of the usefulness of that kind.
For there is nothing else, Brutus—which you of all men least fail to know—to speak beautifully and oratorically than to speak with the best thoughts and the choicest words. And there is no thought that brings fruit to the orator unless it is aptly and finishedly set forth, nor does the light of words appear unless they are carefully arranged, and rhythm lights up both of these; rhythm, however—for this often must be attested—not only not bound poetically but even fleeing it and most unlike it of all; not that the rhythms are not the same, not only of orators and poets but of all who speak at all, and finally of all sounds which we can measure by the ears, but the order of feet brings it about that what is pronounced seems like either oratory or a poem.
This, then—whether it please to be called composition or perfection or rhythm—it is necessary to apply, if you wish to speak ornately, not only, as Aristotle and Theophrastus say, lest oratory be borne along boundlessly like a river, which ought to come to a stand not by the breath of the speaker nor by the stop of a copyist, but compelled by rhythm—but also because apt oratory has far greater force than loosed. For as we see athletes, and not much otherwise gladiators, do nothing either in avoiding cautiously or in attacking vehemently in which the very movement has not a certain grace of the wrestling-school, so that whatever is done usefully for the fight is also comely to the sight, so the orator neither makes a heavy blow unless his thrust was apt, nor sufficiently covertly turns aside an onset unless even in giving ground he understands what is becoming.
And so, as is the movement of those whom the Greeks call "graceless," such seems to me the oratory of those who do not close their thoughts with rhythms; and so far is it from being true that—what those who, either through lack of teachers or through slowness of genius or through flight from labour, have not attained it are wont to say—oratory is enervated by the composition of words, that otherwise there can be in it neither any onset nor force. But the matter demands great exercise, lest we do anything like those who, having followed this kind, did not master it—lest we either transpose words openly, so that the oratory may fall or roll the better; which
Lucius Caelius Antipater, in the preface to the Punic War, says he will not do except of necessity. O simple man, who hides nothing from us; wise man, who thinks one must be a slave to necessity! But this man is altogether rude; in us, however, in writing and in speaking, the excuse of necessity is not approved; for nothing is necessary, and, if anything were, it nevertheless was not necessary to confess it. And this man indeed, who seeks this indulgence from Laelius, to whom he wrote and to whom he excuses himself, both uses that transposition of words and nonetheless fills out and concludes his thoughts no more aptly. But among others, and most of all the Asiatics, who are slaves to rhythm, you may find certain empty words crammed in, as it were, to complete the rhythms. There are also those who, by that fault which flowed most of all from Hegesias, in breaking and chopping up rhythms, fall into a certain abject kind most like little verses.
The third is that in which were those brothers, the chiefs of the Asiatic rhetoricians, Hierocles and Menecles, in my judgment by no means to be despised. For although they are far from the form of truth and from the rule of the Attic writers, yet they make up for this fault either by their faculty or by their abundance. But among them there was no variety, because almost everything was concluded in one manner. He who has shunned these faults, so as neither to transpose a word in such a way that it is understood to have been done of set purpose, nor, stuffing in words, to fill up cracks, as it were, nor, pursuing minute rhythms, to chop up and hamstring his thoughts, nor, without any change, always to be engaged in the same kind of rhythms—he will have avoided almost all faults. For of the merits we have said much, to which those faults are plainly contrary.
But how great a thing it is to speak aptly, one may make trial, if you either dissolve the well-built arrangement of a composing orator by transposing the words;—for the whole thing is spoiled, as those words of ours in the Cornelian, and all that follow: "Neither do riches move me, in which all the Africani and Laelii many slave-dealers and merchants have surpassed": change a little, so that it be "many have surpassed, merchants and slave-dealers," the whole thing will perish; and what follows: "Nor robes or chased gold and silver, in which many eunuchs from Syria and Egypt have outdone our ancient Marcelli and Maximi"; transpose the words thus, so that it be "have outdone eunuchs from Syria and Egypt"; add the third: "Nor indeed those adornments of villas, in which I see that Lucius Paullus and Lucius Mummius, who crammed full of these things both the city and all Italy, could very easily have been surpassed by some Delian or Syrian"; make it thus: "could have been surpassed by some Syrian or Delian";
do you see how, with the order of the words a little changed—the thought, however, standing in the same words—all comes to nothing, when, from apt, the things are loosed? Or if you seize some scattered thought of some ill-built writer, and, with the order of the words a little changed, reduce it to a square, that thing which before was flowing and loosed would be made apt. Come, take from Gracchus that passage before the censors: "It cannot be but that it is of the same man to disapprove the upright who approves the wicked"; how much more aptly, had he said thus: "but that it is of the same man, who approves the wicked, to disapprove the upright!"
To speak in this manner no one ever was unwilling, and no one was able without speaking so; but those who have spoken otherwise could not attain it. Thus they suddenly became Attic; as if forsooth Demosthenes had been a man of Tralles! whose thunderbolts would not so vibrate, were they not borne twisted by rhythms. But if loosed oratory delights anyone more, let him follow that, by all means—provided only thus, that if a man dissolve the shield of Phidias, he will have taken away the whole appearance of the arrangement, not the grace of the single works; as in Thucydides I miss only the round of the oratory, while the adornments are present.
But those men, when they dissolve oratory in which there is neither matter nor any word but an abject one, seem to me to dissolve not a shield but—as is the proverb, although it is too lowly a saying—a besom of twigs. And, that they may seem plainly to have despised this kind which I praise, either let them write something either in the Isocratean manner or in that which Aeschines or Demosthenes uses, and then I shall judge that they have shrunk from this kind not through despair but have fled it by judgment; or I myself will find, on the same condition, someone willing to use it, who shall either speak or write in whichever language you please in that kind in which they wish; for it is easier to dissolve apt things than to connect scattered ones.
But the matter stands thus—that I may say most briefly what I feel: to speak with composition and aptly without thoughts is madness; but to speak with thoughts without both the order and the measure of words is dumbness—yet such a dumbness, however, that those who use it can be held not foolish men, even for the most part discerning; with which let him who is content use it. But the eloquent man, who ought to move not only approvals but admirations, outcries, applause, if it be allowed, ought so to excel in all things that it would be base for him that anything else should be either expected or heard more gladly.
You have my judgment about the orator, Brutus; which either follow, if you approve it, or stand by your own, if some other is yours. In which I shall neither contend with you, nor shall I ever affirm that this view of mine, which I have so strongly asserted in this book, is truer than yours. For not only may another thing seem true to me and to you, but to me myself one thing at one time, another at another. Nor in this matter alone, which looks to the assent of the crowd and to the pleasure of the ears—two things most trivial for judging—but not even in the greatest matters have I as yet found anything firmer, which I might hold, or by which I might direct my judgment, than whatever should seem to me as like to the truth as possible, since the truth itself nonetheless lay hidden in obscurity.
But I would have you, if these things which have been disputed shall less win your approval, either think that a greater work was undertaken than could be accomplished, or that, while I wished to comply with your request, out of the modesty of refusing I took upon myself the shamelessness of writing.