Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

take for example the statement

Crates on seeing an ill-educated boy, beat his paedagogus,

or a very similar example which they do not venture actually to propose as a theme for a moral essay, but content themselves with saying that it is of the nature of such a theme, namely

Milo, having accustomed himself to carrying a calf every day, ended by carrying it when grown to a bull.

All these instances are couched in the same grammatical form [*]( The sense is not clear: it appears to refer to the stereotyped form in which the chria was couched. ) and deeds no less than sayings may be presented for treatment.

Short stories from the poets should in my opinion be handled not with a view to style but as a means of increasing knowledge. Other more serious and ambitious tasks have been also imposed on teachers of literature by the fact that Latin rhetoricians will have nothing to do with them: Greek rhetoricians have a better comprehension of the extent and nature of the tasks placed on their shoulders.

I have made my remarks on this stage of education as brief as possible, making no attempt to say everything, (for the theme is infinite), but confining myself to the most necessary points. I will now proceed briefly to discuss the remaining arts in which I think boys ought to be instructed before being handed over to the teacher of rhetoric: for it

v1-3 p.161

is by such studies that the course of education described by the Greeks as ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία or general education will be brought to its full completion.

For there are other subjects of education which must be studied simultaneously with literature. These being independent studies are capable of completion without a knowledge of oratory, while on the other hand they cannot by themselves produce an orator. The question has consequently been raised as to whether they are necessary for this purpose.

What, say some, has the knowledge of the way to describe an equilateral triangle on a given straight line got to do with pleading in the law-courts or speaking in the senate? Will an acquaintance with the names and intervals of the notes of the lyre help an orator to defend a criminal or direct the policy of his country?