[9]
Is there then no
difference between our declamations and genuine
forensic oratory? I can only reply, that if we speak
with a desire for improvement, there will be no
difference. [ wish indeed that certain additions
could be made to the existing practice; that we made
use of names, that our fictitious debates dealt with
more complicated cases and sometimes took longer
to deliver, that we were less afraid of words drawn
from everyday speech and that we were in the habit
of seasoning our words with jests. For as regards
all these points, we are mere novices when we come
to actual pleading, however elaborate the training
that the schools have given us on other points.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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