Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

To this Gorgias makes no reply, but the argument is taken up by Polus, a hot-headed and headstrong young fellow, and it is to him that Socrates makes his remarks about

shadows

and

forms of flattery.

Then Callicles, [*](508 c.) who is even more hot-headed, intervenes, but is reduced to the conclusion that

he who would truly be a rhetorician ought to be just and possess a knowledge of justice.

It is clear therefore that Plato does not regard rhetoric as an evil, but holds that true rhetoric is impossible for any save a just and good man. In the Phaedrus [*](261 A-273 E.)

he makes it even clearer that the complete attainment of this art is impossible without the knowledge of justice, an opinion in which I heartily concur. Had this not been his view, would he have ever written the Apology of Socrates or the Funeral Oration [*](Menexenus.) in praise of those who had died in battle for their country, both of them works falling within the sphere of oratory.