Note 10 — Chapter IV · THE TEACHING OF RHETORIC

Suasoriæ and controversiæ, Quintilian adds, should not be treated as essentially different. So far as prosopopœia goes, they differ hardly at all; and otherwise they differ mainly in degree, controversiæ being more difficult.

Besides the consecutive discussion of declamatio in chapter x of Book II, much of which is quoted above, Quintilian has many incidental references and allusions. At IV. ii. 29, he defines declamatio as forensium actionum meditatio, “exercise in pleading”, and he implies the same definition in ad declamandum ficta materia (I. x. 33) and in fictas ad imitationem fori consiliorumque materias (i.e., controversias suasoriasque, II. iv. 41). Steadfastly ignoring its use as a form of public speaking, he consistently treats it as a school exercise. He implies that declamatio embraced a large part of actual teaching when he complains (II. i. 8) that it is forecast by grammaticus, and calls rhetor (II. i. 3) declamandi magister. He says repeatedly that it depends largely on imaginative realization of character and emotion (VI. i. 25-27; X. i. 71; and the passage on prosopopœiæ quoted above). He admits the use of it as an exhibition of virtuosity (in ostentationem, II. x. 10), but satirizes this (II. xx. 3) by the anecdote commemorating the futile skill of a man who could throw grains through the eye of a needle. Though he regards it as a gymnastic profitable for mature speakers in providing variety and relief (X. v. 17), he has no patience with the common practise of keeping up indefinitely what is properly a school exercise (XII. xi. 15). Finally he repeats explicitly and implicitly his warning that declamatio should be kept close to actuality; and in a long passage (V. xii. 17-22) concluding his discussion of the sedes argumentorum, he indignantly condemns its perversion into prettiness as an emasculation of oratory.

Lucian, whose satire does not spare rhetors, makes specific mention now and then of declamatio, using the term μελέτη or μελετᾶν: Demonax, 33, 36; Rhetorum præceptor, 17. One passage is very like Quintilian’s in the text above: “But the chief exercise and the aim of the art of dancing, as I said, is acting, which is practised in the same way by rhetors, especially by those who cultivate the so-called declamationes. Their art is the more applauded for its adaptation to the assigned characters and for its consonance with the persons introduced, whether princes, tyrannicides, poor men, or farmers.” De saltatione, 65. Some of his satires, e.g., Tyrannicida, Abdicatus, and some of the encomia, sound like mock declamationes.