Quintilian

“ This is true. But it was unavoidable; for no man can detach himself from the mode of speaking common to those with whom he lives. It is sufficient if he be aware of its worse faults, point out their tendency, and strive to avoid them. This undoubtedly Quintilian did.
Among prose writers of less note we may mention LICINIUS MUCIANUS, CLUVIUS RUFUS, who both wrote histories; and VIPSTANUS MESSALA, an orator of the reactionary school, who, like Quintilian, sought to restore a purer taste, and devoted some of his time to historical essays on the events he had witnessed. ”

“ Hence his partiality for finished antithesis, contrasting strongly with his generally breathless style and turbid diction. Quintilian sums up both aspects of his genius with pregnant brevity, “Ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus,” adding with equal justice, “Magis oratoribus quam poetis annumerandus.” ”

“ But this is not the fault of the man; as a formal rhetorician of good principle, sound orthodoxy, and love for his art, Quintilian stands high in the list of classical authors.
He begins his orator's training from the cradle. He rightly ascribes the greatest importance to early impressions, even the very earliest; illustrating his position by the influence of Cornelia who trained her sons to eloquence from childhood, and other similar cases known to Roman history. A good nurse must be selected; an eloquent one would, doubtless, be hard to find. ”

“ How accurately, and learnedly, has the poet enumerated all the organs of speech, which separately and jointly refuse to execute their respective offices! How superior is this to the simply cleaving of the tongue to the palate, the Vox faucibus hæsit of Virgil. For as Quintilian observes, a detail of particulars is infinitely better than any general expression, however strong. Then the poor Prophet obtains a little remission of his paroxysm; he begins to breathe convulsively—he gasped; he opens his mouth to its utmost extent—he gaped; our expectations are raised, and, alas! ”

“ There is no reason why as Pliny himself seems to have thought in his own case and the cases of many of his friends, you should not be at once an orator and a historian, an epic poet and a comic, a dramatist and an epigram-writer. And the age still believed devoutly in the rules, though free-lances like Martial might kick at them in verse, and though Quintilian, with his unfailing good sense, might hint that there were far too many Figures, and that the subdivisions of Greek rhetoric were in many cases idle. ”

“ He can cordially admire even Sallust, the true fountain-head of the style which he combats, while he will not suffer Lucilius to lie under the aspersions of Horace. The passages in which Quintilian reviews the literature of Greece and Rome are justly celebrated. The judgments which he passes may be in many instances traditional, but, looking to all the circumstances of the time, it seems remarkable that there should then have lived at Rome a single man who could make them his own and give them expression. ”

“ Life. QUINTILIAN.
Quintilian is the last and perhaps the most distinguished of that school of Spanish writers (Martial, the two Senecas, and Lucan) which played so important a part in the literary history of the first century. Born at Calagurris, a small town on the Upper Ebro, he was educated at Rome, and afterwards returned to his native town as a teacher of rhetoric. There he made the acquaintance of the proconsul Galba (68-9) , and was brought back by him to Rome in 68 A.D., where for twenty years he enjoyed the highest reputation as a teacher of eloquence. ”

“ It implies great mental culture, and particularly culture derived from literature. To subsequent ages Quintilian became an authoritative law-giver in the domain of rhetoric, criticism, and language. Doubtless it would have been intellectually better for the later European world to study its philosophy and culture in the Greek originals, but, these being commonly inaccessible, all gratitude is due to Cicero, Seneca, and Quintilian for supplying so excellent a substitute in Latin. ”

“ If fortune so wills it, you will become consul instead of rhetorician; or, if she will, instead of rhetorician, consul! What was Ventidius [382] or Tullius aught else than a lucky planet, and the strange potency of hidden fate? Fate, that gives kingdoms to slaves, and triumphs to captives. Yes! Quintilian was indeed lucky, but he is a greater rarity even than a white crow. But many a man has repented of this fruitless and barren employment, as the sad end of Thrasymachus [383] proves, and that of Secundus Carrinas. ”

“ Quintilian made a fortune by his school, but Juvenal calls him in this respect a white crow. As in modern times the winning jockey, so then the victorious charioteer, received more pay for a single race than the master for a whole year’s labours.
Grammar and rhetoric schools spread throughout the Roman world and continued substantially unchanged in method and subject to the days of Gregory the Great and Augustine the apostle of the English. ”

“ As a poet, if a foreigner may be allowed to express an opinion, for which he has no native authority to adduce, Quintana may be said to be more eloquent than poetical. As Quintilian said of Lucan, both also natives of Spain, "ut dicam quod sentio, magis oratoribus quam poetis annumerandus." Quintana's eloquence consists in earnestness more than in flights of fancy. His favourite subjects were the glories of his country; and his patriotic odes, in which he endeavoured to incite his countrymen to imitate the examples of their forefathers, have been pronounced his best compositions. ”

“ In the elegy we are their rivals. . . . Our historians take no lower place than theirs.' [1]
Let us note that when Quintilian thus expressed himself he was unacquainted with the works of Tacitus, that is to say of the greatest man among them. In his time it was a question for dispute whether Sallust or Livy were preeminent. The classicists preferred Livy, who delighted them by the pure and abundant flow of his eloquence. ”

“ Notwithstanding all that is said, in this Dialogue, of Saleius Bassus, it does not appear, in the judgement of Quintilian, that he was a poet whose fame could extend itself to the distant provinces. Perfection in the kind is necessary. Livy, the historian, was at the head of his profession. In consequence of his vast reputation, we know from Pliny, the consul, that a native of the city of Cadiz was so struck with the character of that great writer, that he made a journey to Rome, with no other intent than to see that celebrated genius ”

“ Quintilian insists that the orator must be a good man (cf. the importance he attaches to early education, i. 1, etc.) .
xii. 1, 1, ‘Sit ergo nobis orator, quem constituimus, is qui a M. Catone finitur, vir bonus dicendi peritus; verum, id quod et ille posuit prius, et ipsa natura potius ac maius est, utique vir bonus.’
Cf. i. prooem. 9-10; ii. 2 (the whole chapter) ; ii. 15, 1.
Quintilian’s exposition is founded mainly on Cicero, from whom he seldom differs. Cf. vii. ”

“ Quintilian left a deep impression on the younger Pliny.854 He made him a Ciceronian, and he fortified his character. The master was one who believed that, in education, moral influence and environment are even more important than intellectual stimulus. He deplores the moral risks to which the careless, self-indulgent parent, or the corrupt tutor, may expose a boy in the years when the destiny of a life is decided for better or worse. ”

“ He appears to have been wealthy for a professional man. Vespasian created for him a professorial chair of rhetoric, liberally endowed with public money, and from this time he was unquestionably, as Martial calls him, “ the supreme controller of the restless youth.” About the year 88 Quintilian retired from teaching and from pleading, to compose his great work on the training of the orator (Institutio Oratoria) . ”

“ In his conversations with Roman art lovers, Quintilian must also have noticed a striking resemblance between the character of Greek artists and Roman orators, and then have sought to gain more exact information from connoisseurs and art-lovers. In his comparative presentation, in which the character of the art is each time associated with that of the age, he is compelled, without knowing or wishing it, to present a history of art. ”

“ In order to form a good style, the sentence should always be closed with variety, strength, and harmony. The ancient rhetoricians held this to be so essentially requisite, that Quintilian has given it a full discussion. That, he says, which offends the ear, will not easily gain admission to the mind. Words should be fitted to their places, so that they may aptly coalesce with one another. In building, the most ill shapen stones may be conveniently fixed ”

“ On the other side must rise a spacious dining-room, supported on stately columns of Numidian marble, and catch the cool [380] sun. However much the house may have cost, he will have besides an artiste who can arrange his table scientifically; another, who can season made-dishes. Yet amid all this lavish expenditure, two poor sestertia will be deemed an ample remuneration for Quintilian. Nothing will cost a father less than his son's education. ”

“ It must be acknowleged indeed, that after the dissolution of the Roman republic, this art began to be perverted by being too much admired. Men grew excessively fond of the numerous stile, and readily sacrificed the strength and energy of their discourse to the harmony of their language. Pliny the younger often complains of this contemptible affectation: And Quintilian speaks of certain prose writers in his time, who boasted that their compositions were so strictly numerous, that their hearers might even beat time to their measures. ”

“ The version of Lucan is one of the greatest productions of English poetry; for there is, perhaps, none that so completely exhibits the genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophick dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes, declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. ”

“ This, together with his subject, the teaching and mastery of which were considered by the Romans to be the climax of education, enabled him to wrest supremacy from the Greek teachers who so long had enjoyed a monopoly of teaching in the city.
When fifty-three years of age, Quintilian retired from his school, and devoted himself to authorship. In the first two books of his great work, "Institutes of Oratory," [27] he sets forth his ideas on education. This is the most remarkable treatise on education bequeathed to us by antiquity. ”

“ Without going so great a length, and admitting the full influence of the genius of Demosthenes in composing the speeches which he so powerfully delivered, every one must admit the influence of an impassioned delivery in heightening the effect of the highest, and concealing the defects of the most ordinary oratory.
Quintilian opens his second book by a discussion of the question, which he says occupied a prominent place in the schools of antiquity, at what age a boy should be taken from the teachers of grammar, and delivered to the instructors in rhetoric. ”

“ Other metres are extremely rare.
QUINTILIAN. (1) LIFE.
M. Fabius Quintilianus was born at Calagurris in Spain. Auson. prof. i. 7, ‘Adserat usque licet Fabium Calagurris alumnum.’ Cf. Jerome yr. Abr. 2104 (quoted below) .
Quintilian came at an early age to Rome, where his father was a rhetorician. Cf. his reminiscences:
x. 1, 86, ‘Utar verbis isdem quae ex Afro Domitio (died A.D. 59) iuvenis excepi.’
v. 7, 7, ‘a Domitio Afro quem adulescentulus senem colui.’
vi. 1, 14, ‘Nobis adulescentibus accusator Cossutiani Capitonis’ (A.D. 57) , etc. ”

“ But on the contrary they expressly declare it to have a sound distinct and peculiar. Quintilian says that even if the form of the Aeolic digamma is rejected by the Romans, yet its force pursues them:
[Quint. XII. x. 29.] Aeolicae quoque litterae qua servum cervumque dicimus, etiamsi forma a nobis repudiata est, vis tamen nos ipsa persequitur.
He gives it as his opinion that it would have been well to have adopted the vau, and says that neither by the old way of writing (by uo) , nor by the modern way (by uu) , is at all produced the sound which we perceive:
[Quint. I. vii. 26.] ”

“ Catachresis, Metalepsis, the ornamental and “perpetual” epithet follow; and then we come to the fruitful subject of Allegory.
Quintilian is perhaps not exactly the writer from whom we should expect a thoroughly satisfactory treatment of this great subject—a subject which, far more than metaphor, escapes the 301state of a mere rhetorical ticket, and challenges that of a real literary quality or kind. Although it is unjust to represent him as merely conversant in details and afraid to rise, a certain timidity serves as the Nemesis of his common-sense. ”

“ The section on war was used by Vegetius (De Re Mil. i. 8) .
Rhetoric was also treated in the encyclopaedia. Quintilian, who mentions him as one of the more careful writers on that subject (iii. 1, 21, ‘accuratius scripsit Celsus’) , frequently combats his opinions and speaks of him rather contemptuously: e.g. ix. 1, 18, ‘Cornelius Celsus nimia profecto novitatis cupidine ductus. Nam quis ignorasse eruditum alioqui virum credat,’ etc. He may be the Celsus of Juv. 6, 245, who (according to the Scholiast) wrote a manual of rhetoric in seven books. ”