Cornelii Valerii Ultraiectini In universam benedicendi [sic] rationem tabula, summam artis rhetoricae complectens

Rhetorical topics.

adjuncts, and contraries. But since he must not only ensure that he makes the cause credible—which must be done in other parts of the speech as well as in the contention, at which place the proposed subject is debated—but also that he reconciles, moves, and even delights, he will employ more places than the dialecticians have been accustomed to hand down, as if they were notes, by whose reminder he will prepare the material of speaking and understand what is required in each part of the speech. Dialectic is content to teach and to make credible; but rhetoric, beyond the necessary duty of teaching, also strives to find how to bring motion to the minds of those whom he wants to persuade: and to incite them either to anger, or hatred, or grief: or to recall them from these disturbances to calmness. Two parts of the speech, as we said, the first and the last, serve for motion or the incitement of the spirit, while the others make the speech credible. Cic. de inuene.

On the exordium, the first part of the speech.

The Exordium is the beginning of the speech, by which the listener's mind is prepared to listen in a friendly, attentive, and intelligent manner. There are two kinds of exordia: the beginning and the insinuation. The beginning is that in which goodwill, attention, and docility are prepared immediately and openly. These three are parts of the exordium, to be applied at the beginning of the speech, but also to be diligently observed throughout the whole cause. The insinuation is that in which the same things as in the beginning are accomplished cleverly and covertly. But so that it may be understood when listeners are to be made benevolent, attentive, or docile, the quality and nature of the cause must be looked at first. For in each of the preceding genera The beginning is an open exordium. Goodwill, attention, and docility are not more proper to the beginning than to the remaining parts. Cic. lib. 2. de Orat. Insinuation is a clever and more hidden method of beginning, which through a certain dissimulation and circuitousness in causes