The last two parts of rhetoric, memoria and pronuntiatio, are really not permanent parts of rhetoric, but only of the rhetoric of spoken address. Memoria, the art of memory, did not mean to the Greeks and Romans the art of learning by heart a written speech, but rather the art of keeping ready for use a fund of argumentative material, together with the features of the case which the speaker might be pleading. The discussion of it in the treatises is usually an exposition of the mnemonic system of visual association, the discovery of which is ascribed to Simonides. Cicero deliberately leaves a discussion of memoria out of his Orator, because as he says, it is common to many arts;[[71]] and the Dutch scholar Vossius in the renaissance denied that it was a part of rhetoric.[[72]] Pronuntiatio, or delivery, has also been found hardly an integral part of rhetoric. It is concerned with the use both of the voice and of gesture. Quintilian, for instance, records the effectiveness of clinging to the judge's knees, or of bringing into the court room the weeping child of the accused.[[73]] Aristotle discusses only the use of the voice.[[74]]
Thus classical rhetoric was almost exclusively restricted to the practical oratory of persuasion. In the republics of Greece and Rome a mastery of rhetoric gave its possessor political power; for by persuasive public speech a public man could gain a following by defending his clients in the law courts, and influence the destinies of the state by his deliberations in the legislative assembly. As long as these republican institutions prevailed, the theory and practice of rhetoric continued to be sound and practical.
4. Rhetoric as Part of Poetic
Implicit in Aristotle and throughout classical literary criticism there is a clear-cut distinction between poetic and rhetoric. Aside from the metrical form of poetic, accepted by all but Aristotle as a distinguishing characteristic, and the non-metrical form of rhetoric, the essentially practical nature of rhetoric marked it off to the Greeks and Romans as something quite different from poetic and infinitely more important in education and public life. But however clear-cut this distinction may be in principle, in practical application there is rarely to be found such ideal isolation.
Aristotle, for instance, carries rhetoric bodily over into poetic by including Thought, διάνοιᾰ, as the third in importance of the constituent elements of tragedy.[[75]] This Thought is the intellectual element in conduct, and in drama is embodied not in action, but in speech.[[76]] Aristotle says,
It is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the political art and of the art of rhetoric. Concerning thought, we may assume what is said in the Rhetoric, to which inquiry the subject more properly belongs. Under thought is included every effect which has to be produced by speech, the subdivisions being--proof and refutation; the excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger and the like; the suggestion of importance or its opposite.[[77]]
This is a transfer of the content of rhetoric to poetic, but poetic remains an art of imitation. Imaginative realization of the life of man would be incomplete if the characters in a narrative or in a drama did not use the same rhetorical art as do the characters of actual life. The poets justly carry over rhetoric when the scene demands it, and have often proved themselves excellent rhetoricians. Quintilian praises the peroration of Priam's speech begging Achilles for the body of Hector,[[78]] and Cicero gives a rhetorical analysis of the speech of the old man in the Andria of Terence, where the arrangement is especially appropriate to the character of the speaker.[[79]] Norden, therefore, seems to go too far in giving this as an example of contamination of poetic by rhetoric.[[80]] Dante remains an excellent poet when he puts into the mouth of Virgil that persuasive speech to Cato in the first canto of the Purgatorio. Antony's speech in Julius Caesar is the best known modern example of the legitimate place of rhetoric in poetic.
5. Poetic as Part of Rhetoric
Just as rhetoric is justly carried over into poetic when in the realization of a character or situation a speech must be made or conduct rationalized, so poetic is constantly utilized by the orator. Public speech would be less persuasive if the characteristic imaginative qualities of poetic were excluded. The ideas and propositions of rhetoric would most ineffectually reach an audience if they were not made vivid. That rhetoric is not thus made synonymous with poetic is due to the fact that in rhetoric the images exist to illuminate the concept, while in poetic they are woven into the movement of the plot. Oratory, like poetry, is emotional, as Longinus asserts.[[81]] Cicero phrases the aim of the orator as "docere, delectare, et movere," to prove, to delight, to move emotionally.[[82]] The vividness and emotion, as well as the charm, of poetic are indispensable in attaining the ultimate aim of rhetoric-- persuasion. The orator must be himself moved, according to Quintilian,[[83]] just as the poet, according to Aristotle.[[84]] That essential quality, indeed, of poetic, the realization of character and situation which presents vividly a situation or event to the mind's eye of the reader or hearer so that he seems to participate in the action and vicariously live through it, was incorporated into rhetoric as ἐνέγεια, a figure of speech. There petrified in an alien substance, this characteristic quality of poetic was transmitted to another age which knew of it through no other source.[[85]] Thus a successful orator narrated with descriptive vividness the circumstances, for instance, of a cruel murder, and even dramatized, speaking now in the person of one actor, now of another, the situation which he was endeavoring to realize for his audience. He was thus enabled better to carry his audience with him to his ultimate goal of persuasion.
But though rhetoric might for the moment thus borrow poetic, and though poetic might borrow rhetoric, the two remained distinct in the large, each conceived as having its own movement, its composition, distinct from that of the other.