Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus to his friend Trypho, greeting You have daily importuned me with the request that I should at length take steps to publish the book on the Education of an Orator which I dedicated to my friend Marcellus. For my own view was that it was not yet ripe for publication. As you know I have spent little more than two years on its composition, during which time moreover I have been distracted by a multitude of other affairs. These two years have been devoted not so much to actual writing as to the research demanded by a task to which practically no limits can be set and to the reading of innumerable authors.

Further, following the precept of Horace who in his Art of Poetry deprecates hasty publication and urges the would-be author

  1. To withhold
  2. His work till nine long years have passed away,
I proposed to give them time, in order that the ardour of creation might cool and that I might revise them with all the consideration of a dispassionate reader.