Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

But it was Cicero who shed the greatest light not only on the practice but on the theory of oratory; for he stands alone among Romans as combining the gift of actual eloquence with that of teaching the art. With him for [*]( The younger Hermagoras, a rhetorician of the Augustan age. )

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predecessor it would be more modest to be silent, but for the fact that he himself describes his Rhetorica [*](sc. the de Inventione. ) as a youthful indiscreition, while in his later works on oratory he deliberately omitted the discussion of certain minor points, on which instruction is generally desired.

Cornificius wrote a good deal, Stertinius something, and the elder Gallio a little on the same subject. But Gallio's predecessors, Celsus and Laenas, and in our own day Verginius, Pliny and Tutilius, have treated rhetoric with greater accuracy. Even to-day we have some distinguished writers on oratory who, if they had dealt with the subject more comprehensively, would have saved me the trouble of writing this book. But I will spare the names of the living. The time will come when they will reap their meed of praise; for their merits will endure to after generations, while the calunmies of envy will perish utterly.

Still, although so many writers have preceded me, I shall not shrink from expressing my own opinion on certain points. I am not a superstitious adherent of any school, and as this book will contain a collection of the opinions of many different authurs, it was desirable to leave it to my readers to selcet what they will. I shall be content if they praise me for my industry, wherever there is no scope for originality.

The question as to the origin of rhetoric need not keep us long. For who can doubt that mankind received the gift of speech from nature at its birth (for we can hardly go further back than that), while the usefulness of speech brought improvement and study, and finally method and exercise gave perfection?

I cannot understand why some hold that the elaboration of speech originated in the fact that

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those who were in peril owing to some accusation being made against them, set themselves to speak with studied care for the purpose of their own defence. This, however, though a more honourable origin, cannot possibly be the earlier, for accusation necessarily precedes defence. You might as well assert that the sword was invented for the purpose of self-defence and not for aggression.