Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

A further point into which we must enquire concerns the age at which a boy may be considered sufficiently advanced to profit by the instructions of the rhetorician. In this connexion we must consider not the boy's actual age, but the progress he has made in his studies. To put it briefly, I hold that the best answer to the question

When should a boy be sent to the school of rhetoric?

is this,

When he is fit.

But this question is really dependent on that previously raised. For if the duties of the teacher of literature are prolonged to include instruction in deliberative declamation, this will

v1-3 p.209

postpone the need for the rhetorician. On the other hand if the rhetorician does not refuse to undertake the first duties of his task, his instruction will be required from the moment the boy begins to compose narratives and his first attempts at passages of praise or denunciation.

We know that the orators of earlier days improved their eloquence by declaiming themes and common-places [*](communes loci = passages dealing with some general principle or theme. For theses see iv. 24. ) and other forms of rhetorical exercises not involving particular circumstances or persons such as provide the material for real or imaginary causes. [*](controversiae are declamations on controversial or judicial themes. A general rule or law is stated: then a special case, which has to be solved in accordance with the law. An abbreviated controversia is to be found in I. x. 33, and they occur frequently hereafter (cp. esp. vi. 96). ) From this we can clearly see what a scandalous dereliction of duty it is for the schools of rhetoric to abandon this department of their work, which was not merely its first, but for a long time its sole task.