Note 40 — Chapter IV · THE TEACHING OF RHETORIC

For all its informality, Pliny’s letter runs, as it were inevitably, into the traditional channels of the formal parts of a speech (proœmiatur, narrat, pugnat) and the three ends of oratory (docet, delectat, afficit). Indeed, it shows throughout a familiarity with rhetorical technic, and assumes a like familiarity on the part of its recipient.