After my delineating the unspeakable as spoken by declamation, an artful conclusion might be to myself fall pregnantly silent. But much like declamation, the academic study is itself a very predictable genre with a number of rules that, though arbitrary, are held as indispensable by the practitioners of the art. One of these rules is the need to offer some words by way of a conclusion. The desire for a conclusion unfortunately cuts against the spirit of declamation itself even as it does partially abet the purposes of Seneca the father or of the Master to get in the last and authoritative word. I would myself prefer that the whole of this study serve only as one speech among many, and, specifically, that it likewise prompt another to take up the pars altera. My peroration will accordingly resemble an exordium.

The many critical declamations leveled against the odious tyranny of declamation exercised at the expense of good, sound Latinity have themselves frequently offered less of an insight into the workings of declamation than a demonstration of certain principles inhering within it. For declamation loves to redeem the father and the voice of authority, and the slaying of declamation is seldom done in the name of any but such fathers of high style as Cicero and Virgil. Let me, though, plead one last time the son's side of the case even as I recognize that a son's destiny ever lies with his father no matter the outcome of the trial.