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[28] Again praise in general terms may be awarded to noble sayings or deeds. Finally things of every kind may be praised. Panegyrics have been composed on sleep and death, and physicians have written eulogies on certain kinds of food.

While therefore I do not agree that panegyric concerns only questions regarding what is honourable, I do think that it comes as a rule under the heading of quality, although all three bases1 may he involved in Panegyric and it was observed by Cicero2 that all were actually used by Gaius Caesar in his denunciation of Cato. But panegyric is akin to deliberative oratory inasmuch as the same things are usually praised in the former as are advised in the latter.

VIII. I am surprised that deliberative oratory also has been restricted by some authorities to questions of expediency. If it should be necessary to assign one single aim to deliberative I should prefer Cicero's3 view that this kind of oratory is primarily concerned with what is honourable. I do not doubt that those who maintain the opinion first mentioned adopt the lofty view that nothing can be expedient which is not good.

1 Quality, conjecture, definition. See chap. vi. for explanation of this term.

2 Top. xxv. 94.

3 de Or. II. lxxxii. 334.

Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.

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