The good man speaking well: is moral character constitutive of oratorical skill, or merely desirable in an orator?

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The orator is a good man skilled in speaking, and the moral term is not decoration. A bad man cannot be an orator. This is not the claim that bad men cannot speak effectively — plainly they can — but that what they exercise is not the art I am describing.¹²

Sources

1. I seem to behold, in the vast immensity, only one adventurer besides myself, namely Cicero; and even he liinMfelfv ttftftigh he entered on the deep with so great and so well ei|uifVi4'(i'ii vessel, contracts his sails, and lays aside his oars, and c'orttii.'its himself with showing merely what sort of eloquence a conS\illi'- mate orator ought to employ.

   Institutes of Oratory Vol 2, p. 391

2. Objections to this opinion answered, 14 — 22. A bad man may doubtless speak with great force, but he would make nearer approaches to perfect eloquence if lie were a good man, 23 — 32. Yet we must be able to conceive arguments on either side of a question, 33 — 35. A good man may sometimes be justified in misleading those whom he addresses, for the attainment of some good object, 36 — 45. 1.

   Institutes of Oratory Vol 2, pp. 391–392

Where the argument is made

• Institutio Oratoria XII.1 (the sustained argument that no bad man can be an orator), II.15-16 (the definition of rhetoric and the reply to those who make it a mere power of persuading), I pr. 9-20, XII.2 (the orator's need of philosophy)

How the argument was received

Held without qualification and defended at length in the final book, which is where the whole work has been heading from its first page.