Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Aristotle, it is true, in his Gryllus [*]( A lost treatise, named after Gryllus, the son of Xenophon. ) produces some tentative arguments to

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the contrary, which are marked by characteristic ingenuity. On the other hand he also wrote three books on the art of rhetoric, in the first of which he not merely admits that rhetoric is an art, but treats it as a department of politics and also of logic.

Critolaus and Athenodorus of Rhodes have produced many arguments against this view, while Agnon renders himself suspect by the very title of his book in which he proclaims that he is going to indict rhetoric. As to the statements of Epicurus on this subject, they cause me no surprise, for he is the foe of all systematic training.

These gentlemen talk a great deal, but the arguments on which they base their statements are few. I will therefore select the most important of them and will deal with them briefly, to prevent the discussion lasting to all eternity.

Their first contention is based on the subject-matter; for they assert that all arts have their own subject-matter (which is true) and go on to say that rhetoric has none, which I shall show in what follows to be false.

Another slander is to the effect that no art will acquiesce in false opinions: since an art must be based on direct perception, which is always true: now, say they, rhetoric does give its assent to false conclusions and is therefore not an art.