To Prepon (Decorum / Fittingness)
Fitting what you say, and how you say it, to the speaker, subject, audience, and occasion.
To prepon (Latin decorum) is the principle that style and content must suit the subject, the audience, the speaker's character, and the moment — grand language for grand themes, plain language for humble ones. The idea reaches back to the Sophists and is treated by Aristotle in the Rhetoric (4th c. BCE), but it became a cornerstone of style in Cicero's Orator and Horace's Ars Poetica, and the supreme regulator of style in Quintilian. It governed both rhetoric and literary criticism for centuries.
How it traveled
- De InventioneFormiae · -84explains
- On OratoryFormiae · -55explains
- OratorFormiae · -46explains
- Partitiones OratoriaeFormiae · -43explains
- On the Sublime— · 50explains
- De Demosthenis dictioneRomeexplains
- Περὶ ἰδεῶν λόγου—explains
- Libro de Elocutione—explains
- Ars Rhetorica [attributed]Smyrnaexplains
- Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶνLaodicea on the Lycusexplains
- De compositione verborum (epitome)Romeexplains
- Ars Rhetorica—explains
- Scholia in Iliadem—explains
- In Aristotelis artem rhetoricam commentarium—explains
- De Compositione VerborumRomeexplains
- Quaestionum Homericanum ad Iliadem pertinentium reliquiaeRomeexplains
- De LysiaRomeexplains
- De ThucydideRomeexplains
- Progymnasmata [Dub.]—explains
- De IsocrateRomeexplains
- Ars rhetorica [attributed]—explains
- OrationesPrusaexplains
- Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος [Sp.]—explains
- Characteres Epistolici [Sp.]—explains
- Epistula ad Pompeium GeminumRomeexplains
- Orationes 45Smyrnaexplains
Key passages(20)
In Aristotelis artem rhetoricam commentarium · Anonymi in Aristotelis Artem Rhetoricam
In Aristotelis artem rhetoricam commentarium · Anonymi in Aristotelis Artem Rhetoricam
De Compositione Verborum · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Demosthenis dictione · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Demosthenis dictione · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Lysia · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De compositione verborum (epitome) · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Epistula ad Pompeium Geminum · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
In Aristotelis artem rhetoricam commentarium · Anonymi in Aristotelis Artem Rhetoricam
In Aristotelis artem rhetoricam commentarium · Anonymi in Aristotelis Artem Rhetoricam