Chapter 11: Development

In session with what has been laid down is an excellence which they call development: it occurs whenever in narrative or forensic speeches which, in accordance with their periods, admit many starting points and pauses, one great passage is wheeled in on top of another and is driven in on top of the passage which is increasing in force. 2. And whether this development comes by addressing oneself to commonplaces or by being powerful—by a strengthening either of matters or of arguments—or by building up works or emotions (you see, there are thousands of forms of development), all the same the public speaker must know that none of these methods by itself, apart from sublimity, can be established as complete, unless, as I see it, it is in lamentations or—heaven knows—in belittlings; but for other methods of development, whenever you take out the sublime, it is as if you took the soul out of the body. For the effectiveness immediately loses its pitch and is emptied, unless strengthened by sublimities. 3. Cer­tainly, though, for the sake of lucidity, we ought to define how these current pronouncements differ from what was said just before (when we presented a kind of sketch of the high points we would take up and arranged them into a unity) and how generally sublimities differ from developments.