Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Rhetoric is a Greek term which has been translated into Latin by oratoria or oratrix. I would not for the world deprive the translators of the praise which is their due for attempting to increase the vocabulary of our native tongue; but translations

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from Greek into Latin are not always satisfactory, just as the attempt to represent Latin words in a Greek dress is sometimes equally unsuccessful.

And the translations in question are fully as harsh as the essentia and queentia [*](sc. essence and possibility. ) of Plautus, [*]( A Stoic. cp. x. i. 124. ) and have not even the merit of being exact. For oratoria is formed like elocutoria and oratrix like elocutrix, whereas the rhetoric with which we are concerned is rather to be identified with eloquentia, and the word is undoubtedly used in two senses by the Greeks.

In the one case it is an adjective i.e. ars rhetorica, the rhetorical art, like piratic in the phrase nauis piratica, in the other it is a noun like philosophy or friendship. It is as a substantive that we require it here; now the correct translation of the Greek grammatice is litteratura not litteratrix or litteratoria, which would be the forms analogous to oratrix and oratoria. But in the case of

rhetoric

there is no similar Latin equivalent.

It is best therefore not to quarrel about it, more especially as we have to use Greek terms in many other cases. For I may at least use the words philosophus, musicus and geometres without outraging them by changing them into clumsy Latin equivalents. Finally, since Cicero gave a Greek title [*](See § 6 of next chapter.) to the earlier works which he wrote on this subject, I may without fear of rashness accept the great orator as sufficient authority for the name of the art which he professed.

To resume, then, rhetoric (for I shall now use the name without fear of captious criticism) is in my opinion best treated under the three following heads, the art, the artist and the work. The art is that which we should acquire by study, and is the art of

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speaking well. The artist is he who has acquired the art, that is to say, he is the orator whose task it is to speak well. The work is the achievement of the artist, namely good speaking. Each of these three general divisions is in its turn divided into species. Of the two latter divisions I shall speak in their proper place. For the present I shall proceed to a discussion of the first.