[158]
Homer1 inculcates this practice by placing before
us the example of Ulysses, whom he describes as
having stood for a while with eyes fixed on the
ground and staff held motionless, before he poured
forth his whirlwind of eloquence. In this preliminary
delay there are certain pauses, as the actors call
them, which are not unbecoming. We may stroke
our head, look at our hand, wring the fingers, pretend to summon all our energies for the effort,
confess to nervousness by a deep sigh, or may adopt
any other method suited to our individual character,
while these proceedings may be extended over some
time, if we find that the judge is not yet giving us
his attention.
1 Il. iii. 217.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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.