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QUINTILIAN [MARCUS FABIUS QUINTILIANU...
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See also:QUINTILIAN [See also:MARCUS See also:FABIUS QUINTILIANUS] (C. A.D. 35-95) , See also:Roman rhetorician, was See also:born at Calagurris in See also:Spain. Concerning his See also:family and his See also:life but few facts remain. His See also:father taught See also:rhetoric, with no See also:great success, at See also:Rome, and Quintilian must have come there at an See also:early See also:age to reside, and must have there grown up to manhood. The years from 61 to 68 he spent in Spain, probably attached in some capacity to the See also:retinue of the future See also:emperor See also:Galba, with whom he returned to the See also:capital. For at least twenty years after the See also:accession of Galba he was at the See also:head of the foremost school of See also:oratory in Rome, and may fairly be called the Isocrates of his See also:time. He also gained some, but not a great, repute as a pleader in the courts. His greatest speech appears to have been a See also:defence of the See also:queen See also:Berenice, on what See also:charge is not known. He appears to have been wealthy for a professional See also:man. See also:Vespasian created for him a professorial See also:chair of rhetoric, liberally endowed with public See also:money, and from this time he was unquestionably, as See also:Martial calls him, " the supreme controller of the restless youth." About the See also:year 88 Quintilian retired from teaching and from See also:pleading, to compose his great See also:work on the training of the orator (Institutio Oratoria). After two years' retirement he was entrusted by See also:Domitian with the See also:education of two See also:grand-nephews, whom he destined as successors to his See also:throne. Quintilian gained the titular See also:rank of See also:consul, and probably-died not See also:long before the accession of See also:Nerva (A.D. 96). A wife and two See also:children died early. Such is the scanty See also:record that remains of Quintilian's uneventful life. But it is possible to determine with some accuracy his relation to the literature and culture of his time, which he powerfully influenced. His career brings See also:home to us the vast See also:change which in a few generations had passed over Roman See also:taste, feeling and society. In the days of See also:Cicero rhetorical teaching had been entirely in the hands of the Greeks. The See also:Greek See also:language, too, was in the See also:main the vehicle of instruction in rhetoric. The first See also:attempt to open a Latin rhetorical school, in 94 B.C., was crushed by authority, and not until the time of See also:Augustus was there any See also:professor of the See also:art who had been born to the full privileges of a Roman See also:citizen. The See also:appointment of Quintilian as professor by the See also:chief of the See also:state marks the laststage in the emancipation of rhetorical teaching from the old Roman prejudices. During the See also:hundred years or more which elapsed between the See also:death of Cicero and the See also:birth of Quintilian education all over the Roman See also:Empire had spread enormously, and the education of the time found its end and See also:climax in rhetoric. See also:Mental culture was for the most See also:part acquired, not for its own See also:sake, but as a discipline to develop skill in speaking, the See also:paramount qualification for a public career. Rome, See also:Italy and the provinces alike resounded with rhetorical exercitations, which were promoted on all sides by professorships, first of Greek, later also of Latin rhetoric, endowed from municipal funds. The See also:mock contests of the future orators roused a vast amount of popular See also:interest. In See also:Gaul, Spain and See also:Africa these pursuits were carried on with even greater See also:energy than at Rome The seeds of the existing culture, such as it was, See also:bore richer See also:fruit on the fresh See also:soil of the western provinces than in the exhausted lands of Italy and the See also:East. While Quintilian lived, men born in Spain dominated the Latin See also:schools and the Latin literature, and he died just too soon to see the first provincial, also of See also:Spanish origin, ascend the imperial throne. As an orator, a teacher and an author, Quintilian set himself to See also:stem the current of popular taste which found its expression in what we are wont to See also:call See also:silver Latin. In his youth the See also:influence of the younger See also:Seneca was dominant. But the chief teacher of Quintilian was a man of another type, one whom he ventures to class with the old orators of Rome. This was Domitius See also:Afer, a rhetorician of See also:Nimes, who See also:rose to the consul-See also:ship. Quintilian, however, owed more to the dead than to the living. His great See also:model was Cicero, of whom he speaks at all times with unbounded eulogy, and whose faults he could scarce bring himself to mention; nor could he well tolerate to hear them mentioned by others. The reaction against the Ciceronian oratory which had begun in Cicero's own life-time had acquired overwhelming strength after his death. Quintilian failed to check it, as another teacher of rhetoric, equally an admirer of Cicero, had failed—the historian See also:Livy. Seneca the See also:elder, a clear-sighted man who could see in Cicero much to praise, and was not See also:blind to the faults of his own age, condemned the old See also:style as lacking in See also:power, while See also:Tacitus, in his See also:Dialogue on Orators, includes Cicero among the men of See also:rude and " unkempt " antiquity. The great See also:movement for the poetization of Latin See also:prose which was begun by See also:Sallust ran its course till it culminated in the monstrous style of See also:Fronto. In the courts See also:judges, juries and audiences alike demanded what was startling, See also:quaint or epigrammatic, and the speakers practised a thousand tricks to satisfy the demand. Oratory became above all things an art whose last thought was to conceal itself. It is not surprising that Quintilian's forensic efforts won for him no lasting reputation among his countrymen. The Institutio Oratoria is one long protest against the tastes of the age. Starting with the See also:maxim of See also:Cato the See also:Censor that the orator is " the See also:good man who is skilled in speaking," Quintilian takes his future orator at birth and shows how this goodness of See also:character and skill in speaking may be best produced. No detail of training in See also:infancy, boyhood or youth is too See also:petty for his See also:attention. The parts of the work which relate to See also:general education are of great interest and importance. Quintilian postulates the widest culture; there is no See also:form of knowledge from which something may not be extracted for his purpose; and he is fully alive to the importance of method in education. He ridicules the See also:fashion of the See also:day, which hurried over preliminary cultivation, and allowed men to grow See also:grey while declaiming in the schools, where nature and reality were for-gotten. Yet he develops all the technicalities of rhetoric with a fulness to which we find no parallel in See also:ancient literature. Even in this portion of the work the illustrations are so apposite and the style so dignified and yet sweet that the See also:modern reader, whose initial interest in rhetoric is of See also:necessity faint, is carried along with much less fatigue than is necessary to See also:master most parts of the rhetorical writings of See also:Aristotle and Cicero. Quintilian's See also:literary sympathies are extraordinarily wide. When obliged to condemn, as in the See also:case of Seneca, he bestows generous and even extravagant praise on such merit as he can find. He can cordially admire even Sallust, the true See also:fountain-head of the style which he combats, while he will not suffer See also:Lucilius to See also:lie under the aspersions of See also:Horace. The passages in which Quintilian reviews the literature of See also:Greece and Rome are justly celebrated. The judgments which he passes may be in many instances traditional, but, looking to all the circumstances of the time, it seems remarkable that there should then have lived at Rome a single man who could make them his own and give them expression. The form in which these judgments are rendered is admirable. The See also:gentle justness of the sentiments is accompanied by a curious felicity of phrase. Who can forget " the immortal swiftness of Sallust," or " the milky richness of Livy," or how " Horace soars now and then, and is full of sweetness and See also:grace, and in his varied forms and phrases is most fortunately bold "? Ancient literary See also:criticism perhaps touched its highest point in the hands of Quintilian. To comprehensive sympathy and clear intellectual See also:vision Quintilian added refined tenderness and freedom from self-assertion. Taking him all in all, we may say that his See also:personality must have been the most attractive of his time—more winning and at the same time more lofty than that of the younger See also:Pliny, his See also:pupil, into whom no small portion of the master's spirit, and even some See also:tincture of the master's literary taste, was instilled. It does not surprise us to hear that Quintilian attributed any success he won as a pleader to his command of pathos, a quality in which his great See also:guide Cicero excelled. In spite of some extravagances of phrase, Quintilian's lament (in his See also:sixth See also:book) for his girl-wife and his boy of great promise is the most pathetic of all the See also:lamentations for bereavement in which Latin literature is so See also:rich. In his precepts about early education Quintilian continually shows his shrinking from See also:cruelty and oppression. Quintilian for the most part avoids passing opinions on the problems of See also:philosophy, See also:religion and politics. The professed philosopher he disliked almost as much as did Isocrates. He deemed that See also:ethics formed the only valuable part of philosophy and that ethical teaching ought to be in the hands of the rhetoricians. In the divine See also:government of the universe he seems to have had a more than ornamental faith, though he doubted the See also:immortality of the soul. As to politics Quintilian, like others of his time, See also:felt See also:free to eulogize the great See also:anti-Caesarean leaders of the dying See also:republic, but only because the See also:assumption was universal that the See also:system they had championed was gone for ever. But Quintilian did not trouble himself, as See also:Statius did, to fling stones at the emperors Caligula and See also:Nero, who had missed their deification. He makes no remark, laudatory or otherwise, on the government of any emperor before Domitian. No character figured more largely in the rhetorical controversies of the schools than the ideal See also:despot, but no word ever betrayed a consciousness that the actual occupant of the See also:Palatine might- exemplify the theme. Quintilian has often been reproached with his flattery of Domitian. No doubt it was fulsome. But it is confined to two or three passages, not thrust continually upon the reader, as by Statius and Martial. To refuse the charge of Domitian's expected successors would have been perilous, and equally perilous would it have been to omit from the Institutio Oratoria all mention of the emperor. And there was at the time only one See also:dialect in which a man of letters could speak who set any value on his See also:personal safety. There was a choice between extinction and the See also:writing of a few sentences in the loath-some See also:court language, which might serve as an See also:official test of See also:loyalty. The Latin of Quintilian is not always free from the faults of style which he condemns in others. It also exhibits many of the usages and constructions which are characteristic of the silver Latin. But no writer of the decadence departs less widely from the best See also:models of the See also:late republican See also:period. The language is on the whole clear and See also:simple, and varied without resort to rhetorical devices and poetical conceits. Besides the Institutio Oratoria, there have come down to us under Quintilian's name 19 longer(ed. Lehnert, 1905) and 145 shorter (ed. See also:Ritter, 1884) Declamationes, or school exercitations on themes like those in the Controversiae of Seneca the elder. The longer pieces are certainly not Quintilian's. The shorter were probably published, if not by himself, at least from notes taken at his lessons. It is See also:strange that they could ever have been supposed to belong to a later See also:century; the style proclaims them to be of Quintilian's school and time. The See also:works of Quintilian have often been edited. Of the See also:editions of the whole works the chief is that by See also:Burmann (1720) ; of the Institutio Oratories that by See also:Spalding, completed by See also:Zumpt and Bonnell (1798-1834, 5th ed., Meister, 1882, the last See also:volume containing a See also:lexicon), and that by See also:Halm (1868), and another by Meister (1886) ; Eng. trans., J S. See also:Watson (1856). The tenth book of the Institutio Oratories has often been separately edited, as by Krueger (ed. 3, 1888), Peterson (1891), Bonnell, See also:Mayor and others. (J. S. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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