Blandus.—Shall I remind you of your mother's command—"Either with your shield or on it?" and yet to return without arms is far less base than to flee under arms. Shall I remind you of the words of the captive?—"Kill me, I am no slave!" To such a man to escape would not have been to avoid capture. Describe the Persian terrors! We heard all that when we were first sent out. Let Xerxes see the three hundred, and learn at what rate the war is valued, what number of men the place is calculated to hold. We will not return even as messengers except after the fight is over. Who has fled I know not; these men Sparta has given me for comrades. I am thankful that the host has fled; they had made the pass of Thermopylae too narrow for me to move in.
§ On the other side.
Cornelius Hispanus.—I hold it a great disgrace to our state if Xerxes see no Greeks before he sees the Spartans. We shall not even have a witness of our valour; the enemy's account of us will be believed. You have my counsel, it is the same as that of all Greece. If any one advise differently, he wishes you to be not brave men but ruined men.
Claudius Marcellus.—They will not conquer us; they will overwhelm us. We have been true to our renown, we have waited till the last. Nature herself has yielded before we.
The above Suasoria is by no means one of the most brilliant; on the contrary, it is a decidedly a tame one, but it is a good instance of an ordinary declamation of the better sort, and gives passages from most of the rhetoricians to whom reference is made in the text.
NOTE II.—A few Observations on the Treatment of Rhetorical Questions, taken from the Third Book of Quintilian.
"The division of the departments of rhetoric, or to use a more correct term, the classification of causes, is three-fold: They are either laudatory, deliberative, or judicial. This is a division according to the subject matter, not according to the artistic treatment. Correspondingly, there are three requisites for pleading well, nature, art, and practice; and three objects which the orator must set before him, to teach, to move, and to delight. Every question turns either on things or on words; or as it may be expressed in other language, is either indefinite or definite. The indefinite is in the form of a universal proposition (Oesis) which Cicero calls propositum, others quaestio universalis civilis, others quaestio philosopho conveniens, and Athenaeus pars causae. This again is divided under the heads of knowledge and action respectively; of knowledge, e.g. Is the world ruled by Providence? of action, e.g., Is political activity a duty? The definite question regards things, persons, times, circumstances: it is called upothesis in Greek, causa in Latin. It always depends on an indefinite question, e.g., Ought Cato to marry? depends on the wider one, is marriage desirable? Hence it may be a suasoria. And this is true even of cases in which no person is specially mentioned, e.g., the question, Ought a man to hold office under a tyranny? depends on the wider one, Ought a man to hold office at all? And this question refers of necessity to some special tyrant, though it may not mention him by name. This is the same division as that into general and special questions. Thus every special includes a general. It is true that generals often bear only remotely on practice, and sometimes are altogether neutralised by peculiar circumstances, e.g., the question, Is political activity a duty? becomes inapplicable to a chronic invalid. Still, all are not of this kind, e.g., Is virtue the end of man? is equally applicable to every human being, whatever his capacity. Cicero in his earlier treatises disapproved of these questions being discussed by the orator; he wished to leave them to the philosopher; but as he grew in experience he changed his mind.
"A cause is defined by Valgius, after Apollodorus, as negotium omnibus suis partibus spectans ad quaestionem, or as negotium cuius finis est controversia. The negotium (or business in hand) is thus defined, congregatio personarum locorum temporum causarum modorum casuum factorum instrumentorum sermonum scriptorum et non scriptorum. The cause, therefore, corresponds to the Greek upostasis (subject), the negotium to peristasis (surroundings). These are of course closely connected; and many have defined the cause as though it were identical with its surroundings or conditions.
"In every discussion three things are the objects of inquiry, an sit, Is it so? quid sit, If so, what is it? quale sit, of what kind is it? For first, there must be something, about which the discussion has arisen. Till this is made clear no discussion as to what it is can arise; far less can we determine what its qualities are, until this second point is ascertained. These three objects of inquiry are exhaustive; on them every question, whether definite or indefinite, depends. The accuser will try to establish, first, the occurrence of the act in dispute, then its character; and, lastly, its criminality. The advocate will, if possible, deny the fact; if he cannot do that he will prove that it is not what the accuser states it to be; or, thirdly, he may contend—and this is the most honourable kind of defence—that it was rightly done. As a fourth alternative, he may take exception to the legality of the prosecution. All these, and every other conceivable division of questions, come under the two general heads (status) of rational and legal. The rational is simple enough, depending only on the contemplation of nature; thus it is content with exhibiting conjecture, definition, and quality. The legal is extremely complex, laws being infinite in number and character. Sometimes the letter is to be observed, sometimes the spirit. Sometimes we get at its meaning by comparison, or induction; sometimes its meaning is open to the most contradictory interpretations. Hence there is room for a far greater display of diverse kinds of excellence in the legal than in the rational department. Thus the declamatory exercises called suasoriae, which are confined to rational considerations, are fittest for young students whose reasoning powers are acute, but who have not the knowledge of law necessary for enabling them to treat controversiae which hinge on legal questions. These last are intended as a preparation for the pleading of actual causes in court, and should be regularly practised even by the most accomplished pleader during the spare moments that his profession allows him."