ABSTRACT
The embellishment of oratory is achieved in the first place by general style and by a sort of inherent colour and flavour; for that it shall be weighty and pleasing and scholarly and gentlemanly and attractive and polished, and shall possess the requisite amount of feeling and pathos, is not a matter of particular divisions of the framework, but these qualities must be visible in the whole of the structure. But further, in order to embellish it with flowers of language and gems of thought, it is not necessary for this ornamentation to be spread evenly over the entire speech, but it must be so distributed that there may be brilliant jewels placed at various points as a sort of decoration. (Cicero, De oratore III.xxv.96)
Classical and medieval critics in the West payed considerable attention to ornament and, as the science of rhetoric developed, elaborated ever-swelling lists of figures and tropes, a pursuit which continued to be popular well into the Renaissance as ever more subtle means were devised to distinguish between different ornaments (see Dixon 1971: 35-44). As Cicero suggests, however, ornament was not merely an extra and fortuitous addition to a composition, but related to the entire discourse, with, however, particularly marked embellishments functioning to signal certain “high points”. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, who divided ornament into two categories, ornatus facilis and ornatus difficilis (“easy” and “difficult”), stressed the necessity of subordinating embellishments to the requirements of the materia (Kelly 1969: 137-8; see Geoffrey of Vinsauf 1967: 42-82).
