Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

For my own part I think that those who have argued against this view did not realise what they were saying, but merely desired to exercise their wits by the selection of a difficult theme, like Polycrates, when he praised Busiris and Clytemnestra; I may add that he is credited with a not dissimilar performance, namely the composition of a speech which was delivered against Socrates.

Some would have it that rhetoric is a natural gift though they admit that it can be developed by practice. So Antonius in the de Oralore [*](II. lvii. 232.) of Cicero styles it a knack derived from experience, but denies that it is an art:

this statement is however not intended to be accepted by us as the actual truth, but is inserted to make

v1-3 p.329

Antonius speak in character, since he was in the habit of concealing his art. Still Lysias is said to have maintained this same view, which is defended on the ground that uneducated persons, barbarians and slaves, when speaking on their own behalf, say something that resembles an exordiam, state the facts of the case, prove, refute and plead for mercy just as an orator does in his peroration.

To this is added the quibble that nothing that is based on art can have existed before the art in question, whereas men have always from time immemorial spoken in their own defence or in denunciation of others: the teaching of rhetoric as an art was, they say, a later invention dating from about the time of Tisias and Corax: oratory therefore existed before art and consequently cannot be an art.

For my part I am not concerned with the date when oratory began to be taught. Even in Homer we find Phoenix [*](Il. ix. 432. ) as an instructor not only of conduct but of speaking, while a number of orators are mentioned, the various styles are represented by the speeches of three of the chiefs [*](i.e. the copious style by Nestor, the plain by Menelaus, the intermediate by Ulysses. ) and the young men are set to contend among themselves in contests of eloquence: [*](Il. xv. 284. ) moreover lawsuits and pleaders are represented in the engravings on the shield of Achilles. [*](Il. xviii. 497 sqq. )