This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
or an epilogue in demonstrative speeches?1 In deliberative speeches, again, exordium, comparison, and recapitulation are only admissible when there is a conflict of opinion. For both accusation and defence are often found in deliberative, but not qua deliberative speech. And further, the epilogue does not even belong to every forensic speech, for instance, when it is short, or the matter is easy to recollect; for in the epilogue what happens is that there is a reduction of length.2 [4] So then the necessary parts of a speech are the statement of the case and proof. These divisions are appropriate to every speech, and at the most the parts are four in number—exordium, statement, proof, epilogue; for refutation of an opponent is part of the proofs, and comparison is an amplification of one's own case, and therefore also part of the proofs; for he who does this proves something, whereas the exordium and the epilogue are merely aids to memory. [5] Therefore, if we adopt all such divisions we shall be following Theodorus3 and his school, who distinguished narrative, additional narrative, and preliminary narrative, refutation and additional refutation. But one must only adopt a name to express a distinct species or a real difference; otherwise, it becomes empty and silly, like the terms introduced by Licymnius in his “Art,” where he speaks of “being wafted along,” “wandering from the subject,”4 and “ramifications.”
1 The generally accepted divisions are: προοίμιον (exordium), διήγησις (narrative), πίστις (proof), ἐπίλογος (peroration). ( διήγησις is a species of πρόθεσις, which is used instead of it just before.) Aristotle objects that it is (as a rule) only the forensic speech which requires a regular διήγησις, a full and detailed statement of what has happened before. In epideictic and demonstrative (deliberative) speeches, the object of which is to prove something, there is no need of another existing division called the refutation of the adversary, and in the demonstrative there can be no room for an epilogue, which is not a summary of proofs and arguments. Thus the necessary divisions of a speech are really only two; πρόθεσις and πίστις, or at most four.
2 i.e. its use is to recall the main facts briefly (sect. 4 end), which in a short speech is needless.
3 Plat. Phaedrus 266d, where the additional kinds of narrative are omitted, and their place taken by πίστωσις and ἐπιπίστωσις (confirmation of the proof).
4 Or, “diverting the judge's attention.”
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.