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[1] There is, however, a dispute as to whether there are three kinds or more. But it is quite certain that all the most eminent authorities among ancient writers, following Aristotle who merely substituted the term
public for
deliberative, have been content with the threefold division.
[2] Still a feeble attempt has been made by certain Greeks and by Cicero in his
de Oratore,
1
to prove that there are not merely more than three, but that the number of kinds is almost past calculation: and this view has almost been thrust down our throats by the greatest authority
2
of our own times.
[3] Indeed if we place the task of praise and denunciation in the third division, on what kind of oratory are we to consider ourselves to be employed, when we complain, console, pacify, excite, terrify, encourage, instruct, explain obscurities, narrate, plead for mercy, thank, congratulate, reproach, abuse, describe, command, retract, express our desires and opinions, to mention no other of the many possibilities?
[4] As an adherent of the older view I must ask for indulgence and must enquire what was the reason that led earlier writers to restrict a subject of such variety to such narrow bounds. Those who think such authorities in error hold that they were influenced by the fact that these three subjects practically exhausted the range of ancient oratory.
[5] For it was customary to write panegyrics and denunciations and to deliver funeral orations, while the greater part of their activities was devoted to the law-courts and deliberative assemblies; as a result, they say, the old writers of text-books only included those kinds of oratory which were most in vogue.
[6] The defenders of antiquity point out that there are three kinds of audience: one which comes simply for the sake of getting pleasure, a second which meets to receive advice, a third to give judgement on causes. In the course of a thorough enquiry into the question it has occurred to me that the tasks of oratory must either be concerned with the law-courts or with themes lying outside the law-courts.
[7] The nature of the questions into which enquiry is made in the courts is obvious. As regards those matters which do not come before a judge, they must necessarily be concerned either with the past or the future. We praise or denounce past actions, we deliberate about the future.
[8] Again everything on which we have to speak must be either certain or doubtful. We praise or blame what is certain, as our inclination leads us: on the other hand where doubt exists, in some cases we are free to form our own views, and it is here that deliberation comes in, while in others, we leave the problem to the decision of others, and it is on these that litigation takes place.
[9] Anaximenes regarded forensic and public oratory as
genera but held that there were seven
species :— exhortation, dissuasion, praise, denunciation, accusation, defence, inquiry, or as he called it
ἐξεταστικόν. The first two, however, clearly belong to deliberative, the next to demonstrative, the three last to forensic oratory.
[10] I say nothing of Protagoras, who held that oratory was to be divided only into the following heads: question and answer, command and entreaty, or as he calls it
εὐχωλή. Plato in his
Sophist
3
in addition to public and forensic oratory introduces a third kind which he styles
προσομιλητική, which I will permit myself to translate by
conversational.
This is distinct from forensic oratory and is adapted for private discussions, and we may regard it as identical with dialectic. [11] Isocrates
4
held that praise and blame find a place in every kind of oratory.
[12] The safest and most rational course seems to be to follow the authority of the majority. There is, then, as I have said, one kind concerned with praise and blame, which, however, derives its name from the better of its two functions and is called
laudatory; others however call it
demonstrative. Both names are believed to be derived from the Greek in which the corresponding terms are
encomiastic, and
epideictic.
[13] The term
epideictic seems to me however to imply display rather than demonstration, and to have a very different meaning from
encomiastic. For although it includes laudatory oratory, it does not confine itself thereto.
[14] Will any one deny the title of
epideictic to
panegyric? But yet
panegyrics are advisory in form and frequently discuss the interests of Greece. We may therefore conclude that, while there are three kinds of oratory, all three devote themselves in part to the matter in land, and in part to display. But it may be that Romans are not borrowing from Greek when they apply the title
demonstrative but are merely led to do so because praise and blame demonstrate the nature of the object with which they are concerned.
[15] The second kind is deliberative, the third forensic oratory. All other
species fall under these three
genera: you will not find one in which we have not to praise or blame, to advise or dissuade, to drive home or refute a charge, while conciliation, narration, proof, exaggeration, extenuation and the moulding of the minds of the audience by exciting or allaying their passions, are common to all three kind of oratory.
[16] I cannot even agree with those who hold that
laudalory subjects are concerned with the question of what is honourable, deliberative with the question of what is expedient, and forensic with tie question of what is just: the division thus made is easy and neat rather than true: for all three kinds rely on the mutual assistance of the other. For we deal with justice and expediency in
punegyric and with honour in
(deliberations, while you will rarely find a
forensic case, in part of which at any rate something of those questions just mentioned is not to be found.
Institutio Oratoria. Quintilian. Harold Edgeworth Butler (Translator). Cambridge, Mass.. 1920-1922.
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