rhetoricians. Since it existed to adorn an occasion, it had to be
considered; but unlike the oratory of the forum or of the council chamber
it was not primarily practical. Quintilian comments on this; for it seems
to aim almost exclusively at gratifying its hearers,[53] in this respect
resembling poetry, which to Quintilian, seems to have no visible aim but
pleasure.[54] Occasional speeches relied much more on style than did those
of the law court and senate, thus meriting Aristotle's adjective
"literary," that is written to be read instead of spoken to be heard.[55]
Cicero, like Quintilian, considers these less practical, as remote from
the conflict of the forum, written to be read, "to be looked at, as it
were, like a picture, for the sake of giving pleasure." Consequently he
declines to classify this form of oratory separately, reducing
Aristotle's three kinds of oratory to two. It is valuable, to his mind, as
the wet-nurse of the young orator, who enlarges his vocabulary and learns
composition from its practice.[56] Aristotle includes it in rhetoric; for
in its field of eulogy, panegyric, felicitation, and congratulation, it
too uses the available means of persuasion to prove some person or thing
praiseworthy or the reverse.[57]



3. Content of Classical Rhetoric


Classical rhetoricians commonly divided their subject into five parts.
This analysis of rhetoric into _inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria_,
and _pronuntiatio_ is to all intents and purposes universal in classical
rhetoric and must be understood to give one a valid idea of its
content.[58] _Inventio_, so often lazily mistranslated as "invention," is
the art of exploring the material to discover all the arguments which may