THE INSTITUTIO ORATORIA OF QUINTILIAN

BOOK VII

PREFACE

I think that enough has been said on the subject of invention. For I have dealt not merely with the methods by which we may instruct the judge, but also with the means of appealing to his emotions. But just as it is not sufficient for those who are erecting a building merely to collect stone and timber and other building materials, but skilled masons are required to arrange and place them, so in speaking, however abundant the matter may be, it will merely form a confused heap unless arrangement is employed to reduce it to order and to give it connection and firmness of structure.

2

Nor is it without good reason that arrangement is treated as the second of the five departments of oratory, since without it the first is useless. For the fact that all the limbs of a statue have been cast does not make it a statue: they must be put together; and if you were to interchange one portion of our bodies or of those of other animals with another, although the body would be in possession of all the same members as before, you would none the less have produced a monster.