Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

c. 35 - c. 100 CE · Roman (Hispanic) · Roman Rhetorical Education, Forensic Oratory, Pedagogy, Literary Criticism

My aim, then, is the education of the perfect orator.

Quintilian taught rhetoric in Rome for twenty years and was the first teacher of the art to be paid from the imperial treasury, appointed to a state chair under Vespasian. He had made his name in the courts before he made it in the classroom, and he never let the schoolroom forget the courtroom. When he retired he set out to write not a handbook of tricks but the education of an orator from infancy to mastery — twelve books that begin with how an infant's nurse should speak and end with what kind of man the finished orator must be.

Topics Marcus Fabius Quintilianus addresses

• vir bonus dicendi peritus
• the education of the orator
• nature, art and practice
• imitation of models
• the reading list of Book X
• declamation
• the controversia and the suasoria
• the corruption of eloquence
• invention of arguments
• arrangement of the parts
• the three styles
• the orator's memory
• the memory palace
• delivery and gesture
• gesture and the voice
• figures and tropes
• status theory
• perspicuity
• copia
• decorum
• the grammarian's school
• against corporal punishment
• the teacher's duty
• Ciceronianism

Questions to put to Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

The Orator as Good Man

• Why do you insist that a bad man cannot be an orator?
• Can't a wicked person still persuade an audience effectively?
• How does moral character actually make someone better at speaking?
• What happens to your definition when a scoundrel wins a case?
• Does the audience's trust in the speaker really matter that much?

Education from Infancy to the Forum

• Why do you start the orator's training with nurses and cradles?
• What's your argument against beating students?
• Can oratory really be taught, or is the great speaker simply born?
• How far can teaching carry a student of ordinary natural ability?
• Why do you think early speech habits shape the adult orator?

Declamation and School Exercises

• What's wrong with the way the declamation schools teach?
• How should declamation exercises actually prepare students for real cases?
• Why do you think fictitious cases about pirates and tyrants corrupt eloquence?
• Can school exercises ever replace learning by doing in the courts?
• What makes a good practice theme versus a corrupting one?

Imitation and the Reading of Authors

• How should a student imitate the great writers without becoming a copyist?
• Why do you rank Cicero above all other Latin orators?
• What's dangerous about Seneca's epigrammatic style?
• Should a student read widely or focus on a few perfect models?
• How does reading the best authors actually improve one's own speaking?

Eloquence and Political Life

• Can the orator's art survive without the free republic it was built for?
• What useful work remains for eloquence under an emperor?
• How do you see the relationship between oratory and political power?
• Is the art of public deliberation still possible when one man rules?
• Why does eloquence matter if the great public questions are already decided?

Converse with Marcus Fabius Quintilianus on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Marcus Fabius Quintilianus's own writing, cited to the page.