LIV.  But in the longer way the first question is, whether there actually is any such thing as a rhythmical oration at all; (for some persons do not think that there is, because there is not in oratory any positive rule, as there is in verses, and because the people who assert that there is that rhythm cannot give any reason why there is.) In the next place, if there is rhythm in an oration, what sort of rhythm it is; and whether it is of more than one kind; and whether it consists of poetical rhythm, or of some other kind; and if it consists of poetical rhythm, of which poetical rhythm, (for some think that there is but one sort of poetical rhythm, while others think there are many kinds.) In the next place, the question arises, whatever sorts of rhythm there may be, whether one or more, whether they are common to every kind of oratory, (since there is one kind used in narrating, another kind in persuading, and another in teaching,) or whether the different kinds are all adapted equally to every sort of oratory.  If the different kinds are common to each kind of oratory, what are they?  If there is a difference, then what is the difference, and why is the rhythm less visible in a speech than in a verse?  Besides, there is a question whether what is rhythmical in a speech is made so solely by rhythm, or also by some especial arrangement of words, or by the kind of words employed; or whether each division has its component parts, so that rhythm consists of intervals, arrangement of words, while the character of the words themselves is visible being a sort of shape and light of the speech; and whether arrangement is not the principal thing of all, and whether it is not by that that rhythm is produced, and those things which I have called the forms and light of a speech, and which, as I have said, the Greeks call [Greek:  schaemata].  But that which is pleasant when uttered by the voice, and that which is made perfect by careful regulation, and brilliant by the nature of the words employed, are not one and the same thing, although they are both akin to rhythm, because each is perfect of itself; but an arrangement differs from both, and is wholly dependent on the dignity or sweetness of the language employed.

These are the main questions which arise out of an inquiry into the nature of oratory.

LV.  It is, then, not hard to know that there is a certain rhythm in a speech:  for the senses decide that.  And it is absurd not to admit an evident fact, merely because we cannot find out why it happens.  And verse itself was not invented by a priori reasoning, but by nature and the senses, and these last were taught by carefully digested reason what was the fact; and accordingly it was the careful noticing and observation of nature which produced art.

But in verses the matter is more evident.  For although there are some kinds of verse which, if they be not chanted, appear but little to differ from prose; and this is especially the case in all the very best of those poets who are called [Greek:  lyriloi] by the Greeks; for when you have stripped them of the singing, the language remains almost naked.  And some of our countrymen are like them.  Like that line in Thyestes:—­