That the statement of facts should be brief does not permit its being either abrupt or meager. That it should sound true implies that it should be in character, i.e., that it should be dramatically consistent and convincing, and also that it should lead into the argument. Similarly practical are the warnings against making the division (IV. v) too minute and against letting it hamper emotional appeal or interrupt progressive coherence. To his conspectus of the ancient classification of proof (V) Quintilian adds (xiii) the following shrewd maxims for rebuttal: Defense demands more skill than attack. The system of _status_ has one of its main uses in refutation. Rebuttal often consists largely in breaking down analogies. Never rebut what your opponent did not say. Neither be too anxious nor fight over every item. Peroration should be more than recapitulation; it should take occasion from the adversary. VI. i. (5) _Plan_ Quintilian’s discussion of _dispositio_ (VII) is like that of other ancient treatises in confining itself to plan in general. Without specific doctrine for the promotion of cogency as progressive coherence, it carries forward the system of _status_ as determining the main line of argument. That the ancients appreciated and practised what is now taught in American schools and colleges as the lore of paragraphs is evident in their best composition, notably in the orations of Cicero. The decline from such progressive coherence among the later _declamatores_ is one of the marks of decadence (see section II, below). But how the lore was taught we are left to infer. The elementary working out of what is now unfortunately called a detached paragraph, i.e., of a single short composition, is prescribed in the _chria_ (I. ix) much as in modern manuals; but that does not touch the art of composing a sustained speech _by_ paragraphs. In the cogency of mounting by stages we miss the typical systematic instruction. Some of this must have been inculcated through assigned outline (_materia_, page 67 above), some of it by the rhetor’s oral teaching. Quintilian’s instruction as to the close of the exordium is a clear hint of what is now taught as paragraph emphasis. “The proem should put last that to which the beginning of what follows can most conveniently be linked.” IV. i. 76. There are, indeed, other hints; but that so important an aspect of composition should not be a distinct topic even in Quintilian’s constructive pedagogy leaves the ancient lore of _dispositio_ too analytical to be sufficient for modern teachers. (6) _Style Analyzed_