Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

It will also be found that names are frequently derived from races, places and many other causes. Further there are obsolete slave-names such as Marcipor or Publipor [*](i.e. Marcipuer, Publipuer.) derived from the names of their owners. The teacher must also inquire whether there is not room for a sixth

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case in Greek and a seventh in Latin. For when I say
wounded by a spear,
the case is not a true ablative in Latin nor a true dative in Greek.

Again if we turn to verbs, who is so ill-educated as not to be familiar with their various kinds and qualities, their different persons and numbers. Such subjects belong to the elementary school and the rudiments of knowledge. Some, however, will find points undetermined by inflexion somewhat perplexing. For there are certain participles, about which there may be doubts as to whether they are really nouns or verbs, since their meaning varies with their use, as for example lectum and sapiens,

while there are other verbs which resemble nouns, such as fraudator and nutritor. [*](lectum may be ace. of lectus, bed, or supine or past part. pass. of legerc, to read ; sapiens may be pres. part. of sapere, to know, or an adj. = wise ; fraudator and nutritor are 2nd and 3rd pers. sing. fut. imper. pass. of fraudo and nutrio. ) Again itur in antiquam silvam [*](Aen. vi. 179: They go into the ancient wood. ) is a peculiar usage. For there is no subject to serve as a starting point: fletur is a similar example. The passive may be used in different ways as for instance in

  1. panditur interea domus omnipotentis Olympi
Aen. x. 1
Meanwhile the house of almighty Olympus is opened.
and in
  1. totis usque adeo turbatur agris.
Ecl. i. 11
  1. There is such confusion in all the fields.
Yet a third usage is found in urbs habitatur, whence we get phrases such as campus curritur and mare navigatur. Pransus and potus [*](Having dined,having drunk. Active in sense, passive in form. ) have a meaning which does not correspond to their form. And what of those verbs which are only partially conjugated? Some (as for instance fero ) even suffer an entire change in the perfect. Others are used only in the third
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person, such as licet and piget, while some resemble nouns tending to acquire an adverbial meaning; for we say dictu and factu [*](Supines.) as we say noctu and diu, since these words are participial though quite different from dicto and facto.

Style has three kinds of excellence, correctness, lucidity and elegance (for many include the all-important quality of appropriateness under the heading of elegance). Its faults are likewise threefold, namely the opposites of these excellences. The teacher of literature therefore must study the rules for correctness of speech, these constituting the first part of his art.

The observance of these rules is concerned with either one or more words. I must now be understood to use verbum in its most general sense. It has of course two meanings; the one covers all the parts of which language is composed, as in the line of Horace:

  1. Once supply the thought,
  2. And words will follow swift as soon as sought
Ars Poetica, 311.
the other restricts it to a part of speech such as lego and scribo. To avoid this ambiguity, some authorities prefer the terms voces, locutiones, dictiones.