Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

I have restricted my list of poets to these names, because Germanicus

v10-12 p.53
Augustus [*](Domitian.) has been distracted from the study of poetry on which he had embarked by his care for the governance of the world, and the gods have thought it scarce worthy of his powers that he should be the greatest of poets. But what can be more sublime, more learned, more perfect in every detail than those works to which he devoted himself in the seclusion to which he retired after conferring the supreme power upon his father and his brother? Who could sing of war better than he who wages it with such skill? To whom would the goddesses that preside over literature sooner lend an ear? To whom would Minerva, his familiar deity, [*]( He claimed to be the son of Minerva. It is doubtful if he ever wrote any poetry. Cp. Tac Hist. iv. 86, Suet. Dom. 2 and 20. ) more readily reveal her secrets?

Future ages shall tell of these things more fully; to-day his glory as a poet is dimmed by the splendour of his other virtues. But you will forgive us, Caesar, who worship at the shrine of literature, if we refuse to pass by your achievements in silence and insist on testifying at least that, as Virgil sings,

  1. The ivy creeps amid your victor bays
Ecl. viii. 13.

We also challenge the supremacy of the Greeks in elegy. Of our elegiac poets Tibullus seems to me to be the most terse and elegant. There are, however, some who prefer Propertius. Ovid is more sportive than either, while Gallus [*]( Cornelius (Gallus, the friend of Virgil, and the first distinguished writer of elegy at Rome. ) is more severe. Satire, on the other hand, is all our own. The first of our poets to win renown in this connexion was Lucilius, some of whose devotees are so enthusiastic that they do not hesitate to prefer him not merely to all other satirists, but even to all other poets. I disagree with them as much as I do with Horace, [*](Sat. I. iv. 11. )