{"agent_id":"quintilian","agent_name":"Marcus Fabius Quintilianus","slug":"declamation-and-the-corruption-of-eloquence","label":"Declamation and the corruption of eloquence: does school exercise train the orator or ruin him?","topic":"Declamation and the corruption of eloquence","question":"Does school exercise train the orator or ruin him?","position":"Declamation is the most useful of exercises when it imitates the cases an orator will actually plead, and the most corrupting when it becomes a display of ingenuity on subjects no court has ever heard.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Declamation is the most useful of exercises when it imitates the cases an orator will actually plead, and the most corrupting when it becomes a display of ingenuity on subjects no court has ever heard.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"*Institutio Oratoria* II.10 (on declamation and its abuses), II.4, V.12.17-23, VIII pr., X.5. Reception: Tacitus's *Dialogus de Oratoribus* makes the same charge more radically; the elder Seneca's *Controversiae* preserve the practice Quintilian is attacking; modern scholarship treats his ambivalence as the central unresolved tension of the *Institutio*.","works":["*Institutio Oratoria* II.10 (on declamation and its abuses), II.4, V.12.17-23, VIII pr., X.5"],"reception":"Tacitus's *Dialogus de Oratoribus* makes the same charge more radically; the elder Seneca's *Controversiae* preserve the practice Quintilian is attacking; modern scholarship treats his ambivalence as the central unresolved tension of the *Institutio*.","status":"A critique I press hard while remaining the fullest theorist of the practice I am criticizing. The tension is in the texts and I do not resolve it.","era":"c. 35 - c. 100 CE","discipline":"Rhetoric","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 1","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And as the generation of man id effected by both parents, and as you will in vain scatter seed, unless the furrowed ground, previously softened, cherish it, Eo neither can eloquence come to its growth unless by mutual agreement between him who communicates and him wha leceivea mora ^^M >f the ^M I KtM QUtMTILUJT.","label":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 1"},{"n":2,"work":"Institutio Oratoria Vol 1, Books I-III","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Erit optimum; sed certe sint grandia et tumida, non stulta ctiam et acrioribus oculis intuenti ridicula: ut, si iam cedendum est, impleat se declamator aliquando, dum sciat, ut quadrupedes, cum viridi pabulo distentae sunt, san- guinis detractione curantur et sic ad cibos viribus conservandis idoncos redeunt, ita sibi quoque tenu- andas adipes, et quidquid humoris corrupti con- traxerit, emittendum, si esse sanus…","label":"Institutio Oratoria Vol 1, Books I-III"},{"n":3,"work":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 1","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Will there then be death. After the pestilence had sub^iited, the father wae accused at tmtaon to the state. See also Deolatuat. 38t, and the 19th aud 43rd of those asoribed to CaljihnmiuH Flaocus. + Qaari tn rorpui catii.'\\ Compare c 4, sect. 5. t Adipa, fat Dfprdtendetitr.l Not equivalent to i\"mnirtur or agnoiaiiir, but t\" % drfcrttur a aiiitaiif, le e^rpedire. 1, W I lb6 QUINTILIAN.","label":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 1"},{"n":4,"work":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 2","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The same is the case with regard to oratorical coinposition; for in the origi- nals, which we take for our models, there is nature and real power, while every imitation, on the contrary, is something t Res dmplicisaimce.] That is, those among which the least variety is found; those which we must not expect to be muchdistiuguished one from another; as blades of grass and leaves. Spalding. 280 QUINTILIAN. [b. X.","label":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 2"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-good-man-speaking-well","label":"The good man speaking well: is moral character constitutive of oratorical skill, or merely desirable in an orator?"},{"slug":"imitation-and-the-canon","label":"Imitation and the canon: does modelling oneself on the great authors produce mastery or servility?"}]}