Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

In the same period flourished Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, Prodicus of Ceos, Protagoras of Abdera, for whose instructions, which he afterwards published in a text-book, Euathlus is said to have paid 10,000 [*](About £312.) denarii, Hippias of Elis and Alcidamas of Elaea whom Plato [*](Phaedr. 261 D. ) calls Palamedes.

There was Antiphon also, who was the first to write speeches and who also wrote a text-book and is said to have spoken most eloquently in his own defence; Polycrates, who, as have already said, wrote a speech against Socrates, and Theodorus of Byzantium, who was one of those called

word-artificers

by Plato. [*](Phaedr. 266 E. )

Of these Protagoras and Gorgias are said to have been the first to treat commonplaces, Prodicus, Hippias, Protagoras and Thrasymachus the first to handle emotional themes. Cicero in the Brutus [*](vii. 27.) states that nothing in the ornate rhetorical style was ever committed to writing before Pericles, and that certain of his speeches are still extant. For my part I have been unable to discover anything in

v1-3 p.377

the least worthy of his great reputation for eloquence, [*](cp. XII, ii. 22: x. 49, where Quintilian asserts that all the writings of Pericles have been lost. ) and am consequently the less surprised that there should be some who hold that he never committed anything to writing, and that the writings circulating under his name are the works of others.