as it could, what was its subject matter? Aristotle, following Plato,[46]
says in his definition "any subject," for any subject can be made
persuasive. But this was too philosophical for his contemporaries and
successors, who saw in their own environment that in practice rhetoric was
almost entirely concerned with persuading a jury that certain things were
or were not so, or persuading a deliberative assembly that this or that
should or should not be done. Consequently Hermagoras defines the subject
matter of rhetoric as "public questions," Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as
"communal affairs," and the _Ad Herennium_ as "whatever in customs or laws
is to the public benefit."[47] The same influence caused Cicero in his
youthful _De inventione_ to classify rhetoric as part of political
science,[48] and in the _De oratore_ to make Antonius restrict rhetoric to
public and communal affairs,[49] although in another section he returns to
Aristotle's "any subject" as the material of rhetoric[50] as does
Quintilian later.[51]

Although Aristotle did state in his definition that any subject was the
material of rhetoric, in his classification of the varieties of speeches
he practically restricts rhetoric as did Hermagoras, Dionysius, and the
_Ad Herennium_; for here he finds but three kinds of oratory: the
deliberative, the forensic, and the occasional, ἐπιδεικτικός. Forensic
oratory he defines as that of the law court; deliberative, of the senate
or public assembly; and occasional, of eulogy and congratulation. Perhaps
the most illustrative modern examples of the third would be Fourth-of-July
addresses, funeral sermons, and appreciative articles or lectures. Aristotle
suggests that exaggeration is most appropriate to the style of occasional
oratory; for as the facts are taken for granted, it remains only to invest
them with grandeur and dignity.[52]

Occasional oratory seems to have given no little concern to the classical