Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius

QUINTILIANO, MARCO FABIO. — Orator and teacher of eloquence, born at Calahorra (Calagurris) in Spain between A.D. 35 and 40, died in Rome ca. 96.

Having completed his rhetorical education at Rome and returned to his homeland, the emperor Galba summoned him back to Rome in 68. There he practiced as an advocate and for twenty years directed his school of eloquence, with an annual state salary, earning universal esteem and approval. He was the teacher of Pliny the Younger and of the two grandnephews of Domitian on his sister Domitilla’s side; he received consular rank and wealth, but also suffered family misfortunes. “Post impetratam studiis... veniam” (Inst. or., proem., 1), he undertook, at the request of many and in order to remedy the harm caused by notes of his lessons published by his editors, his principal work: Iustitutio oratorio, in twelve books, dedicated to Vittorio Marcello, in which he poured out the results of his studies and experience. “Vagae moderator summe juventae/gloria romanae, Quintiliane, togae” (Marziale, Epigr., II, 90): above all, he was the model of the teacher and educator; his work, which is not a systematic treatment of rhetoric and pedagogy, but rather, concerning these two arts, the work of an upright spirit, sound judgment, and long preparation through reading and the study of authors, was a common textbook in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and still remains highly useful in our own days.

Starting from Cicero’s maxim, “orator vir bonus, dicendi peritus,” the orator whom Q. has in view is the perfect wise man, whom the Roman tradition always had in mind: “sit igitur orator vir talis qualis vere sapiens appellari possit,” one who has a lofty civic and human mission, whose indispensable prerequisite must be moral perfection. He therefore leads the reader through the entire itinerary from childhood to the formation of the orator accomplished in every respect. According to the division proposed by the author himself, Book I deals with elementary education and is rich in observations on the qualities of the teacher, on when and how instruction should begin, giving preference to the public school over the private one, because the public school better stimulates emulation and the acquisition of independence and self-mastery; he wants the teacher to study the character of children, know how to transform the school into a ludus, avoid physical punishments with rods and the whip, because they are degrading and counterproductive, and seek to replace them with admonition and persuasion: “quo saepius monuerit, rarius castigabit.” Book II begins the study of the rules for the formation of the orator, explaining the concept and value of rhetoric; Books III–VII, after a brief historical summary of rhetorical theories and their teachers in Greece and Rome, deal with the technique of oratory, inventio and ordo; Books VIII–XI with elocutio, memoria, and actio; Book XII with the part “longe gravissima,” methodology, insofar as it concerns the qualities of the orator, his literary and scientific culture, the practical rules for the practice of advocacy, and worthy occupations after retiring from professional practice. In Book X, the list of Greek and Latin authors to be read and studied is noteworthy, although they are judged solely from the standpoint of their usefulness to the orator.

Of his other works, the De causis corruptae eloquentiae (in which he opposed the extremism of the classicists and of the uncompromising modernizers, marking out for eloquence the middle path of a rightful evolution, consonant with the times and circumstances); the Declamationes attributed to him are for the most part not his, since they differ from the style and precepts that he sets forth in the Institutio. As for the Orationes, he himself mentions, among the many that he must have delivered, only three (Inst. orat., IV, 1, 19; VII, 2, 24; IX, 3, 73), of which he published only one out of a desire for glory; whereas he does not acknowledge authorship of the others circulating under his name (as likewise of the two books De orte rethorica) and disseminated through the ill-considered zeal of his pupils (ibid., proem. 7).