Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

So far I have attempted merely to sound the praises of the noblest

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of arts without bringing it into connexion with the education of an orator. I will therefore pass by the fact that the art of letters and that of music were once united: indeed Archytas and Euenus held that the former was subordinate to the latter, while we know that the same instructors were employed for the teaching of both from Sophron, a writer of farces, it is true, but so highly esteemed by Plato, that he is believed to have had Sophron's works under his pillow on his deathbed:

the same fact is proved by the case of Eupolis, who makes Prodamus teach both music and literature, and whose Maricas, who was none other than Hyperbolus in disguise, asserts that he knows nothing of music but letters. Aristophanes [*](Knights, 188. ) again in more than one of his plays shows that boys were trained in music from remote antiquity, while in the Hypobolimaeus of Menander an old man, when a father claims his son from him, gives an account of all expenses incurred on behalf of the boy's education and states that he has paid out large sums to musicians and geometricians.

From the importance thus given to music also originated the custom of taking a lyre round the company after dinner, and when on such an occasion Themistocles confessed that he could not play, his education was (to quote the words of Cicero)

regarded as imperfect.

[*](Tusc. Disp. I. ii. 4. )

Even at the banquets of our own forefathers it was the custom to introduce the pipe and lyre, and even the hymn of the Salii has its tune. These practices were instituted by King Numa and clearly prove that not even those whom we regard as rude warriors, neglected the study of music, at least in so far as the resources of that age allowed.

Finally there was actually a proverb among the Greeks,

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that the uneducated were far from the company of the Muses and Graces.