Of other studies preliminary to that of rhetoric, §.; 1. Necessity of them, 2-8. Authority of the ancients in favor of learning music, 9-16. Union of music with grammar, 17-21. Utility of music to the orator, 22-30. What sort of music to be studied, 31-33. Utility of geometry, 34-37. Geometrical proof, 38-45. Astronomy; examples of the benefit attending a knowledge of it, 46-49. 1. THESE remarks I have made, as briefly as I could, upon grammar, not so as to examine and speak of everything, which would be an infinite task, but merely of the most essential points. I shall now add some concise observations on the other departments of study, in which I think that boys should he initiated before they are committed to the teacher of rhetoric, in order that that circle of instruction which the Greeks call ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία (enkyklios paideia) may be completed. 2. For about the same age, the study of other accomplishments must be commenced; concerning which, as they are themselves arts and cannot be complete without the art of oratory, but are nevertheless insufficient of themselves to form an orator, it is made a question whether they are necessary to this art. 3. Of what service is it, say some people, for pleading a cause or pronouncing a legal opinion to know how equilateral triangles may be erected upon a given line? Or how will he who has marked the sounds of the lyre by their names and intervals defend an accused person or direct consultations the better on that account? 4. They may perhaps reckon, also, the many speakers, effective in every way in the forum, who have never attended a geometrician and who know nothing of musicians except by the common pleasure of listening to them. To these observers I answer in the first place (what Cicero also frequently remarks in his book De oratore, addressed to Brutus) that it is not such an orator as is or has been that is to be formed by us, but that we have conceived in our mind an idea of the perfect orator, an orator deficient in no point whatever. 5. For when the philosophers would form their wise man, who is to be perfect in every respect, and, as they say, a kind of mortal god, they not only believe that he should be instructed in a general knowledge of divine and human things, but conduct him through a course of questions which are certainly little, if you consider them merely in themselves (as, sometimes, through studied subtleties of argument) not because questions about horns or crocodiles can form a wise man, but because a wise man ought never to be in error even in the least matters. 6. In like manner, it is not the geometrician or the musician or the other studies which I shall add to theirs, that will make the perfect orator (who ought to be a wise man), yet these accomplishments will contribute to his perfection. We see an antidote, for example, and other medicines to heal diseases and wounds, compounded of many and sometimes opposite ingredients, from the various qualities of which results that single compound, which resembles none of them, yet takes its peculiar virtues from them all. 7. Mute insects, too, compose the exquisite flavor of honey, inimitable by human reason, of various sorts of flowers and juices. Shall we wonder that eloquence, nothing more excellent than which the providence of the gods has given to men, requires the aid of many arts, which, even though they may not appear or put themselves forward in the course of a speech, yet contribute to it a secret power and are silently felt? 8. "People have been eloquent," some one may say, "without these arts"; but I want a perfect orator. "They contribute little assistance," another may observe, but that to which even little shall be wanting will not be a whole, and it will be agreed that perfection is a whole, of which though the hope may be on a distant height, as it were, yet it is for us to suggest every means of attaining it, that something more, at least, may thus be done. But why should our courage fail us? Nature does not forbid the formation of a perfect orator, and it is disgraceful to despair of what is possible. 9. For myself, I could be quite satisfied with the judgment of the ancients; for who is ignorant that music (to speak of that science first) enjoyed, in the days of antiquity, so much not only of cultivation, but of reverence, that those who were musicians were deemed also prophets and sages. Not to mention others, such as Orpheus and Linus, both of whom are transmitted to the memory of posterity as having been descended from the gods, and the one, because he soothed the rude and barbarous minds of men by the wonderful effect of his strains, as having drawn after him not only wild beasts, but even rocks and woods. 10. Timagenes declares that music was the most ancient of sciences connected with literature, an opinion to which the most celebrated poets give their support, according to whom the praises of gods and heroes used to be sung to the lyre at royal banquets. Does not Virgil's Iopas, too, sing errantem lunam solisque labores, "the wandering moon, and labors of the sun"; the illustrious poet thus plainly asserting that music is united with the knowledge of divine things? 11.If this position be granted, music will be necessary also for the orator, for as I observed, this part of learning, which, after being neglected by orators, has been taken up by the philosophers, was a portion of our business, and without the knowledge of such subjects, there can be no perfect eloquence. 12. Nor can any one doubt that men eminently renowned for wisdom have been cultivators of music, when Pythagoras and those who followed him spread abroad the notion, which they doubtless received from antiquity, that the world itself was constructed in conformity with the laws of music, which the lyre afterwards imitated. 13. Nor were they content, moreover, with that concord of discordant elements, which they call ἁρμονία (harmonia), but attributed even sound to the celestial motions; for Plato, not only in certain other passages, but especially in his Timaeus, cannot even be understood except by those who have thoroughly imbibed the principles of this part of learning. What shall I say, too, of the philosophers in general, whose founder, Socrates himself, was not ashamed, even in his old age, to learn to play on the lyre? 14. It is related that the greatest generals used to play on the harp and flute, and that the troops of the Lacedaemonians were excited with musical notes. What other effect, indeed, do horns and trumpets produce in our legions, since the louder is the concert of their sounds, so much greater is the glory of the Romans than that of other nations in war? 15. It was not without reason, therefore, that Plato thought music necessary for a man who would be qualified for engaging in government, and whom the Greeks call πολιτικός (politikos). Even the chiefs of that sect which appears to some extremely austere, and to others extremely harsh, were inclined to think that some of the wise might bestow a portion of their attention on this study. Lycurgus, also, the maker of most severe laws for the Lacedaemonians, approved of the study of music. 16. Nature herself, indeed, seems to have given music to us as a benefit, to enable us to endure labors with greater facility, for musical sounds cheer even the rower; and it is not only in those works in which the efforts of many, while some pleasing voice leads them, conspire together that music is of avail, but the toil even of people at work by themselves finds itself soothed by song, however rude. 17. I appear, however, to be making a eulogy on this finest of arts rather than connecting it with the orator. Let us pass lightly over the fact, then, that grammar and music were once united; since Archytas and Aristoxenus, indeed, thought grammar comprehended under music. That they themselves were teachers of both arts, not only Sophron shows (a writer, it is true, only of mimes, but one whom Plato so highly valued, that he is said to have had his books under his head when he was dying), but also Eupolis, whose Prodamus teaches both music and grammar, and Maricas, that is to say, Hyperbolus, confesses that he knows nothing of music but letters. 18. Aristophanes, also, in more than one of his comedies, shows that boys were accustomed to be thus instructed in times of old. In the Hypobolimaeus of Menander, an old man, laying before a father, who is claiming a son from him, an account as it were of the expenses that he had bestowed upon his education, says that he has paid a great deal to musicians and geometers. 19. Hence too it was customary at banquets that the lyre should be handed round after the meal, and Themistocles, on confessing that he knew not how to play, "was accounted," to use the words of Cicero, "but imperfectly educated." 20. Among the Romans, likewise, it was usual to introduce lyres and flutes at feasts. The verses of the Salii also have their tune, and these customs, as they were all established by Numa, prove that not even by those who seem to have been rude and given to war was the cultivation of music neglected, as far as that age admitted it. 21. It passed at length, indeed, into a proverb among the Gauls, that the uneducated had no commerce either with the Muses or the Graces. 22. But let us consider what peculiar advantage he who is to be an orator may expect from music. Music has two kinds of measures, the one in the sounds of the voice, the other in the motions of the body, for in both a certain due regulation is required. Aristoxenus the musician divides all that belongs to the voice into ῥυθμόν (rhythmos), "rhythm," and μέλος (melos) "melody in measure," of which the one consists in modulation, the other in singing and tunes. Are not all these qualifications, then, necessary to the orator, the one of which relates to gesture, the second to the collocation of words, and the third to the inflections of the voice, which in speaking are extremely numerous? 23. Such is undoubtedly the case unless we suppose, perchance, that a regular structure and smooth combination of words is requisite only in poems and songs, and is superfluous in making a speech; or that composition and modulation are not to be varied in speaking, as in music, according to the nature of the subject. 24. Music, however, by means of the tone and modulation of the voice, expresses sublime thoughts with grandeur, pleasant ones with sweetness, and ordinary ones with calmness, and sympathizes in its whole art with the feelings attendant on what is espressed. 25. In oratory, accordingly, the raising, lowering, or other inflection of the voice tends to move the feelings of the bearers. We try to excite the indignation of the judges in one modulation of phrase and voice (that I may again use the same term), and their pity in another, for we see that minds are affected in different ways even by musical instruments, though no words cannot be uttered by them. 26. A graceful and becoming motion of the body, also, which the Greeks call εὐρυθμία (eurhythmia), is necessary and cannot be sought from any other art than music; a qualification on which no small part of oratory depends, and for treating on which a peculiar portion of our work is set apart. 27.If an orator shall pay extreme attention to his voice, what is so properly the business of music? But neither is this department of my work to be anticipated, so that we must confine ourselves, in the mean time, to the single example of Caius Gracchus, the most eminent orator of his time, behind whom, when he spoke in public, a musician used to stand and give, with a pitch-pipe, which the Greeks call a tonarion, the tones in which his voice was to be exerted. 28. To this he attended even in his most turbulent harangues, both when he frightened the patricians and after he began to fear them. For the sake of the less learned, and those, as they say, "of a duller muse," I would wish to remove all doubt of the utility of music. 29. They will allow, assuredly, that the poets should be read by him who would be an orator, but are they, then, to be read without a knowledge of music? If any one is so blind of intellect, however, as to hesitate about the reading of other poets, he will doubtless admit that those should be read who have written poems for the lyre. 30. On these matters I should have to enlarge more fully, if I recommended this as a new study, but since it has been perpetuated from the most ancient times, even from those of Chiron and Achilles to our own (among all, at least, who have not been averse to a regular course of mental discipline), I must not proceed to make the point doubtful by anxiety to defend it. 31. I consider it sufficiently apparent, however, from the very examples which I have now given, what music pleases me and to what extent. Yet I think that I ought to declare more expressly that that sort of music is not recommended by me, which, prevailing at present in the theatres and being of an effeminate character, languishing with lascivious notes, has in a great degree destroyed whatever manliness was left among us, but instead those strains in which the praises of heroes were sung, and which heroes themselves sung. I also do not recommend the sounds of psalteries and languishing lutes, which ought to be shunned even by modest females, but rather the knowledge of the principles of the art, which is of the highest efficacy in exciting and allaying the passions. 32. For Pythagoras, as we have heard, calmed a party of young men, when urged by their passions to offer violence to a respectable family, by requesting the female musician who was playing to them to change her strain to a spondaic measure. Chrysippus also assigns a peculiar tune for the lullaby of nurses, which is used with children. 33. There is also a subject for declamation in the schools, not unartfully invented, in which it is supposed that a flute-player, who had played a Phrygian tune to a priest while he was sacrificing, is accused, after the priest has been driven to madness, and has thrown himself over a precipice, of having been the cause of his death. If such causes have to be pleaded by an orator and cannot be pleaded without a knowledge of music, how can even the most prejudiced forbear to admit that this art is necessary to our profession? 34. As to geometry, people admit that some attention to it is of advantage in tender years, for they allow that the thinking powers are excited, and the intellect sharpened by it, and that a quickness of perception is thence produced. But they fancy that it is not, like other sciences, profitable after it has been acquired, but only whilst it is being studied. 35. Such is the common opinion respecting it. But it is not without reason that the greatest men have bestowed extreme attention on this science, for as geometry is divided between numbers and figures, the knowledge of numbers, assuredly, is necessary not only to an orator, but to every one who has been initiated even in the rudiments of learning. In pleading causes, it is very often in request; when the speaker, if he hesitates, I do not say about the amount of a calculation, but if he even betray, by any uncertain or awkward movement of his fingers, a want of confidence in his calculations, is thought to be but imperfectly accomplished in his art. 36. The knowledge of linear figures, too, is frequently required in causes; for lawsuits occur concerning boundaries and measures. But geometry has a still greater connection with the art of oratory. 37. Order, in the first place, is necessary in geometry, and is it not also necessary in eloquence? Geometry proves what follows from what precedes, what is unknown from what is known, and do we not draw similar conclusions in speaking? Does not the well-known mode of deduction from a number of proposed questions consist almost wholly in syllogisms? Accordingly you may find more persons to say that geometry is allied to logic than that it is allied to rhetoric. 38. But even an orator, though rarely, will yet at times prove logically, for he will use syllogisms if his subject shall require them and will of necessity use the enthymeme, which is a rhetorical syllogism. Besides, of all proofs, the strongest are what are called geometrical demonstrations, and what does oratory make its object more indisputably than proof? 39.Geometry often, moreover, by demonstration, proves what is apparently true to be false. This is also done with respect to numbers, by means of certain figures which they call pseudographs, and at which we were accustomed to play when we were boys. But there are other questions of a higher nature. For who would not believe the asserter of the following proposition: "Of whatever places the boundary lines measure the same length, of those places the areas also, which are contained by those lines, must necessarily be equal?" 40. But this proposition is fallacious, for it makes a vast difference what figure the boundary lines may form, and historians, who have thought that the dimensions of islands are sufficiently indicated by the space traversed in sailing round them, have been justly censured by geometricians. 41. For the nearer to perfection any figure is, the greater is its capacity, and if the boundary line, accordingly, shall form a circle, which of all plane figures is the most perfect, it will embrace a larger area than if it shall form a square of equal circumference. Squares, again, contain more than triangles of equal circuit, and triangles themselves contain more when their sides are equal than when they are unequal. 42. Some other examples may perhaps be too obscure, but let us take an instance most easy of comprehension even to the ignorant. There is scarcely any man who does not know that the dimensions of an acre extend two hundred and forty feet in length, and the half of that number in breadth; and it is easy to calculate what its circumference is and how much ground it contains. 43. A figure of a hundred and eighty feet on each side, however, has the same periphery, but a much larger area contained within its four sides. If any one thinks it too much trouble to make the calculation, he may learn the same truth by means of smaller numbers. Ten feet, on each side of a square, will give forth for the circumference, and a hundred for the area; but if there were fifteen feet on each side, and five at each end, they would, with the same circuit, deduct a fourth part from the area inclosed. 44. If, again, nineteen feet be extended in parallel lines, only one foot apart, they will contain no more squares than those along which the parallels shall be drawn, and yet the periphery will be of the same extent as that which encloses a hundred. Thus the further you depart from the form of a square, the greater will be the loss to the area. 45. It may therefore happen even that a smaller area may be inclosed by a greater periphery than a larger one. Such is the case in plane figures, for on hills and in valleys, it is evident even to the untaught that there is more ground than sky. 46. Need I add that geometry raises itself still higher, so as even to ascertain the system of the world? When it demonstrates, by calculations, the regular and appointed movements of the celestial bodies, we learn that in that system, there is nothing unordained or fortuitous, a branch of knowledge which may be sometimes of use to the orator. 47. When Pericles freed the Athenians from fear, at the time that they were alarmed by an eclipse of the sun, by explaining to them the causes of the phenomenon; or when Sulpicius Gallus, in the army of Paulus Aemilius, made a speech on an eclipse of the moon, that the minds of the soldiers might not be terrified as by a supernatural prodigy, do they not, respectively, appear to have discharged the duty of an orator? 48. Had Nicias been possessed of such knowledge in Sicily, he would not have been confounded with similar terror and have given over to destruction the finest of the Athenian armies. Dion, we know, when he went to overthrow the tyranny of Dionysius, was not deterred by a similar phenomenon. 49. Though the utility of geometry in war, however, be put out of the question, though we do not dwell upon the fact that Archimedes alone protracted the siege of Syracuse to a great extent, it is sufficient, assuredly, to establish what I assert: that numbers of questions, which it is difficult to solve by any other method, such as those about the mode of dividing, about division to infinity, and about the rate of progressions, are accustomed to be solved by those geometrical demonstrations. If an orator has to speak (as the next book will show) on all subjects, no man, assuredly, can become a perfect orator without a knowledge of geometry.
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