Rhetorica ad Herennium by Cicero

Author:Cicero
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2016-07-15T07:00:00+00:00

Book IV

Inasmuch as in the present Book, Herennius, I have written about Style, and wherever there was need of examples, I have used those of my own making, and in so doing have departed from the practice of the Greek writers on the subject, I must in a few words justify my method. And that I make this explanation from necessity, and not from choice, is sufficiently indicated by the fact that in the preceding Books I have said nothing by way either of preface or of digression. Now, after a few indispensable observations, I shall, as I undertook to do, discharge my task of explaining to you the rest of the art. But you will more readily understand my method when you have learned what the Greeks say.

On several grounds they think that, after they have given their own precepts on how to embellish style, they must for each kind of embellishment offer an example drawn from a reputable orator or poet. And their first ground is that in doing so they are prompted by modesty, because it seems a kind of ostentation not to be content to teach the art, but to appear desirous themselves of creating examples artificially. That, they say, would be showing themselves off, not showing what the art is. Hence it is in the first place a sense of shame which keeps us from following this practice, for we should appear to be approving of ourselves alone, to be prizing ourselves, scorning and scoffing at others. For when we can take an example from Ennius, or offer one from Gracchus, it seems presumptuous to neglect these and to have recourse to our own examples.

In the second place, examples, they say, serve the purpose of testimony; for, like the testimony of a witness, the example enforces what the precept has suggested and only to a slight degree effected. Would not a man be ridiculous, then, if in a trial or in a domestic procedure he should contest the issue on the basis of his own personal testimony? For an example is used just like testimony to prove a point; it should properly therefore be taken only from a writer of highest reputation, lest what ought to serve as proof of something else should itself require proof. In fact, inventors of examples must either prefer themselves to all others and esteem their own products most of all, or else deny that the best examples are those taken from the orators or poets of highest reputation. If they should set themselves above all others, they are unbearably conceited; if they should grant to any others a superiority over themselves and yet not believe that the examples of these others excel their own, they cannot explain why they concede this superiority.

And furthermore, does not the very prestige of the ancients not only lend greater authority to their doctrine but also sharpen in men the desire to imitate them? Yes, it excites the ambitions and whets the zeal of

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