ABSTRACT
The main doctrines of the rhetorical handbooks on the subject of speech-construction, which were concerned with the basic component parts of introduction, statement of the case, arguments to strengthen one's position and refute that of an opponent, and peroration, and which gave detailed instructions on how to determine the central issue and to handle it, were quite obviously designed to be especially applicable to law-court cases. These precepts, which Greek rhetoricians had evolved from the accumulated experience of Greek pleading, and from careful study and analysis of the speeches of the great Greek orators, contained much that was of permanent value. They were, in due course, faithfully transmitted to Latin, and both the treatise Ad Herennium and, especially, Cicero's youthful De Inventione, though formal and redolent of school-instruction, are nevertheless remarkable for their thoroughness and patient attention to detail. Cicero came to realize later that the rules had their limitations in practice, and we may be sure that, in Greek, they were never more valuable than when they were transmitted by a man such as Molo of Rhodes, from whom Cicero learnt much, and whom he describes as eminent both as an advocate and as an instructor. [1] Cicero's own speeches show in innumerable ways how much he had learnt from rhetorical theory; but they also show how necessary he often found it to ignore, or modify, the rules and adapt them to the practical requirements of Roman pleading. [2] Many teachers of rhetoric, however, especially under the Empire, did not have this practical experience, but were content to transmit the precepts in stereotyped and compact form, and to make their students learn them by heart. [3] It is precisely because Quintilian was so very much better qualified than the average teacher of rhetoric that his own detailed discussion of theory and practice is of inestimable value. He had not only analysed the speeches of Cicero and other Roman orators, to see exactly how they obtained their effect, and then supplemented this study by listening to practising orators and learning much from Domitius Afer, but he had also been active himself as a pleader in the courts for many years before he became the most prominent teacher of rhetoric at Rome. [4] His own account constantly switches from theory to practice, from school to law court, and represents the best teaching which Roman students ever received on the subject of public speaking in general, and of advocacy in particular. It will always be useful, therefore, to see how far he accepts, supplements or rejects traditional doctrine and contemporary teaching methods.
