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Book 5 - Introduction
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Some rhetoricians have thought that the only duty of an orator is to teach; others have called this his chief duty. The necessity for this book.
1. THERE have been authors, and some, indeed, of high reputation, who have thought that the sole duty of an orator is to inform. Excitement of the feelings, they considered, was to be prohibited for two reasons: first, because all perturbation of the mind is an evil, and secondly, because it is inexcusable for a judge to be diverted from the truth by pity, anger, or any similar passion. To aim at pleasing the audience, when the object of speaking is to gain victory, they regarded not only as needless in a pleader, but scarcely worthy even of a man. 2. Many, too, who doubtless did not exclude those arts from the department of the orator, considered, nevertheless, that his proper and peculiar office was to establish his own propositions and to refute those of his adversary. 3. Whichsoever of these opinions is right (for I do not here offer my own judgment), this book must appear, in the estimation of both parties, extremely necessary, as the entire subject of it is proof and refutation, to which all that has hitherto been said on judicial causes is subservient. 4. For there is no other object either in an introduction or a narrative than to prepare the judge. To know the states of causes and to contemplate all the other matters of which I have treated above would be useless unless we proceed to proof. 5. In fine, of the five parts into which we have distinguished judicial pleading, whatever other may occasionally be unnecessary in a cause, there certainly never occurs a suit in which proof is not required.
As to directions regarding it, I think that I shall make the best division of them by first showing what are applicable to all kinds of questions, and next, by enlarging on what are peculiar to the several sorts of causes.
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