Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

For my own part, and I have authority to support me, I hold that the material of rhetoric is composed of everything that may be placed before it as a subject for speech. Plato, if I read him aright, makes Socrates [*](Gorg. 449 E. ) say to Gorgias that its material is to be

v1-3 p.359
found in things not words; while in the Phaedrus [*](Phaedr. 261 A. ) he clearly proves that rhetoric is concerned not merely with law-courts and public assemblies, but with private and domestic affairs as well: from which it is obvious that this was the view of Plato himself.

Cicero also in a passage [*](de Inv. i. 5. ) of one of his works, states that the material of rhetoric is composed of the things which are brought before it, but makes certain restrictions as to the nature of these things. In another passage, [*](de Or. I. vi. 21. I will not demand omniscience from an orator, although etc. ) however, he expresses his opinion that the orator has to speak about all kinds of things; I will quote his actual words:

although the very meaning of the name of orator and the fact that he professes to speak well seem to imply a promise and undertaking that the orator will speak with elegance and fullness on any subject that may be put before him.

And in another passage [*](ib. iii. xiv. 54. ) he says,

It is the duty of the true orator to seek out, hear, read, discuss, handle and ponder everything that befalls in the life of man, since it is with this that the orator is concerned and this that forms the material with which he has to deal.

But this material, as we call it, that is to say the things brought before it, has been criticised by some, at times on the ground that it is limitless, and sometimes on the ground that it is not peculiar to oratory, which they have therefore dubbed a discursive art, because all is grist that comes to its mill.

I have no serious quarrel with these critics, for they acknowledge that rhetoric is concerned with every kind of material, though they deny that it has any peculiar material just because of that material's multiplicity. But in spite of this multiplicity, rhetoric is not unlimited in scope, and there are other minor

v1-3 p.361
arts whose material is characterised by the same multiplicity: such for instance is architecture, which deals with everything that is useful for the purpose of building: such too is the engraver's art which works on gold, silver, bronze, iron.

As for sculpture, its activity extends to wood, ivory, marble, glass and precious stones in addition to the materials already mentioned.

And things which form the material for other artists, do not for that reason cease forthwith to be material for rhetoric. For if I ask what is the material of the sculptor, I shall be told bronze; and if I ask what is the material of the maker of vessels (I refer to the craft styled χαλκευτική by the Greeks), the answer will again be bronze: and yet there is all the difference in the world between vessels and statues.