[27]
I think I have now dealt with all the precepts of
those who treat oratory as a mystery. But these rules
still leave scope for free exercise of the judgment.
For although I consider that there are occasions
[p. 365]
when the orator may lawfully employ the syllogism, I
am far from desiring him to make his whole speech
consist of or even be crowded with a mass of
epicheiremes and enthymemes. For a speech of that
character would resemble dialogues and dialectical
controversies rather than pleadings of the kind with
which we are concerned, and there is an enormous
difference between the two.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.