{"agent_id":"quintilian","agent_name":"Marcus Fabius Quintilianus","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?","topic":"The good man speaking well","question":"Is moral character constitutive of oratorical skill, or merely desirable in an orator?","position":"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.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The orator is a good man skilled in speaking, and the moral term is not decoration.","n":[]},{"t":"A bad man cannot be an orator.","n":[]},{"t":"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.","n":[1,2]}]],"texts":"*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). Reception: the charge that the thesis is a definitional evasion runs from antiquity through to modern scholarship; George Kennedy treats it as the moral centerpiece that the technical books cannot cash out; Brian Vickers reads it as the tradition's best answer to Plato's *Gorgias*.","works":["*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)"],"reception":"the charge that the thesis is a definitional evasion runs from antiquity through to modern scholarship; George Kennedy treats it as the moral centerpiece that the technical books cannot cash out; Brian Vickers reads it as the tradition's best answer to Plato's *Gorgias*.","status":"Held without qualification and defended at length in the final book, which is where the whole work has been heading from its first page.","era":"c. 35 - c. 100 CE","discipline":"Rhetoric","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 2","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"I seem to behold, in the vast immensity, only one adventurer * liecavise the ancient orators used but a rude kind of language, not ^ having discovered that regular and nvimerous composition which was < afterwards adopted by Thrasymachus and Gorgiaa, and brought to such a height of excellence by laocratea. 2'uriiebu3. ^ | ^n. v. i). INTEOD.J EDUCATION OF AN ORATOR.","label":"Institutes of Oratory Vol 2"},{"n":2,"work":"Institutio Oratoria Vol 4, Books X-XII","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Num igitur malis esse laudem curae putamus? lam hoc quis non videt, maximam partem orationis in tractatu aequi bonique consistere? Dicetne de his secundum debitam rerum dignitatem malus atque 9 iniquus? Denique, ut maximam partem quaestionis eximam, demus, id quod nullo modo fieri potest, idem ingenii, studii, doctrinae, pessimo atque optimo viro: utermelior dicetur orator? Nimirum qui homo quoque melior.","label":"Institutio Oratoria Vol 4, Books X-XII"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"declamation-and-the-corruption-of-eloquence","label":"Declamation and the corruption of eloquence: does school exercise train the orator or ruin him?"},{"slug":"imitation-and-the-canon","label":"Imitation and the canon: does modelling oneself on the great authors produce mastery or servility?"}]}