Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 3
Harold Edgeworth Butler, Ed.

3. The art of oratory, as taught by most authorities, and those the best, consists of five parts:- invention, arrangement, expression, memory, and delivery or action (the two latter terms being used synonymously). But all speech expressive of purpose involves also a subject and words. [2] If such expression is brief [p. 385] and contained within the limits of one sentence, it may demand nothing more, but longer speeches require much more. For not only what we say and how we say it is of importance, but also the circumstances under which we say it. It is here that the need of arrangement comes in. But it will be impossible to say everything demanded by the subject, putting each thing in its proper place, without the aid of memory. [3] It is for this reason that memory forms the fourth department. But a delivery, which is rendered unbecoming cither by voice or gesture, spoils everything and almost entirely destroys the effect of what is said. Delivery therefore must be assigned the fifth place.

[4] Those (and Albutins is among them), who maintain that there are only three departments on the ground that memory and delivery (for which I shall give instructions in their proper place¹) are given us by nature not by art, may be disregarded, although Thrasymachus held the same views as regards delivery. [5] Some have added a sixth department, subjoining judgment to invention, on the ground that it is necessary first to invented and then to exercise our judgment. For my own part I do not believe that invention can exist apart from judgement, since we do not say that a speaker has invented incousistent, two-edged or foolish arguments, but merely that he has failed to avoid them. It is true that Cicero in his Rhetorica² [6] includes judgment under mention; but in my opinion judgment is so inextricably mingled with the first three departments of rhetoric (for without judgment neither expression nor arrangement are possible), that I think that even delivery owes much to it. I say this with all the greater confidence because Cicero in [p. 387] his Partitiones oratoriae³ arrives at the same five-fold division of which I have just spoken. For after an initial division of oratory into invention and expression, he assigns matter and arrangement to invention, words and delivery to expression, and makes memory a fifth department common to them all and acting as their guardian. Again in the Orator⁴ he states that eloquence consists of five things, and in view of the fact that this is a later work we may accept this as his more settled opinion. [8] Others, who seem to me to have been no less desirous than those mentioned above to introduce some novelty, have added order, although they had already mentioned arrangement, as though arrangement was anything else than the marshalling of arguments in the best possible order. Dion taught that oratory consisted only of invention and arrangement, but added that each of these departments was twofold in nature, being concerned with words and things, so that expression comes under invention, and delivery under arrangement, while memory must be added as a fifth department. The followers of Theodorus divide invention into two parts, the one concerned with matter and the other with expression, and then add the three remaining departments. [9] Hermagoras places judgment, division, order and everything relating to expression under the heading of economy, a Greek word meaning the management of domestic affairs which is applied metaphorically to oratory and has no Latin equivalent.

[10] A further question arises at this point, since some make memory follow invention in the list of departments, while others make it follow arrangement. Personally I prefer to place it fourth. For we ought not merely to retain in our minds the fruits of our [p. 389] invention, in order that we may be able to arrange them, or to remember our arraangement in order that we may express it, but we must also commit to memory the words which we propose to use, since memory embraces everything that goes to the compposition of a speech. [11] There are also not a few who have held that these are not parts of rhetoric, but rather duties to be observed by the orator. For it is his business to invent, arrange, express, etcetera. If, however, we accept this view, we leave nothing to art. [12] For although the orator's task is to speak well, rhetoric is the science of speaking well. Or if we adopt another view, the task of the artist is to persuade, while the power of persuasion resides in the art. Consequently, while it is the duty of the orator to invent and arrange, intention and arrangement may be regarded as belonging to rhetoric. [13] At this point there has been much disagreement, as to whether these are parts or duties of rhetoric, or, as Athenaeus believes, elements of rhetoric, which the Greeks call στοιχεῖα But they cannot correctly be called elements. For in that case we should have to regard them merely as first-principles, like the moisture, fire, matter or atoms of which the universe is said to be composed. Nor is it correct to call them duties, since they are not preformed by others, but perform something themselves. We must therefore conclude that they are parts. [14] For since rhetoric is composed of them, it follows that:, since a whole consists of parts, these must be parts of the whole which they compose. Those who have called them duties seem to me to have been further influenced by the fact that they wished to reserve the name of parts for another [p. 391] division of rhetoric: for they asserted that the parts of rhetoric were, panegyric, deliberative and forensic oratory. But if these are parts, they are parts rather of the material than of the art. [15] For each of them contains the whole of rhetoric, since each of them requires invention, arrangement, expression, memory and delivery. Consequently some writers have thought it better to say that there are three kinds of oratory; those whom Cicero⁵ has followed seem to me to have taken the wisest course in terming them kinds of causes.