[48]
As regards the emotions, there can be no one so illeducated as to deny that the poet was the master of all,
tender and vehement alike. Again, in the few lines
with which he introduces both of his epics, has he
not, I will not say observed, but actually established
the law which should govern the composition of the
exordium? For, by his invocation of the goddesses
believed to preside over poetry he wins the goodwill
of his audience, by his statement of the greatness
of his themes he excites their attention and renders
them receptive by the briefness of his summary.
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.