Quintilian - Influence of Quintilian

Influence of Quintilian

The influence of Quintilian’s masterwork, Institutio Oratoria, can be felt in several areas. First of all, there is his criticism of the orator Seneca. Quintilian was attempting to modify the prevailing imperial style of oratory with his book, and Seneca was the principal figure in that style’s tradition. He was more recent than many of the authors mentioned by Quintilian, but his reputation within the post-classical style necessitated both his mention and the criticism or back-handed praise that is given to him. Quintilian believed that “his style is for the most part corrupt and extremely dangerous because it abounds in attractive faults” (Quintilianus, 10.1.129). Seneca was regarded as doubly dangerous because his style was sometimes attractive. This reading of Seneca “has heavily coloured subsequent judgments of Seneca and his style” (Dominik, 51).

Quintilian also made an impression on Martial, the Latin poet. A short poem, published in 86, was addressed to him, and opened, "Quintilian, greatest director of straying youth, / you are an honour, Quintilian, to the Roman toga". However, one should not take Martial's praise at face value, since he was known for his sly and witty insults. The opening lines are all that are usually quoted, but the rest of the poem contains lines such as "A man who longs to surpass his father’s census rating" (6). This speaks of Quintilian's ambitious side and his drive for wealth and position.

After his death, Quintilian's influence fluctuated. He was mentioned by his pupil, Pliny, and by Juvenal, who may have been another student, “as an example of sobriety and of worldly success unusual in the teaching profession” (Gwynn, 139). During the 3rd to 5th centuries, his influence was felt among such authors as St. Augustine of Hippo, whose discussion of signs and figurative language certainly owed something to Quintilian, to St. Jerome, editor of the Vulgate Bible, whose theories on education are clearly influenced by Quintilian’s. The Middle Ages saw a decline in knowledge of his work, since existing manuscripts of Institutio Oratoria were fragmented, but the Italian humanists revived interest in the work after the discovery of a forgotten, complete manuscript in central Europe. The Italian poet Petrarch addressed one of his letters to the dead to Quintilian, and for many he “provided the inspiration for a new humanistic philosophy of education” (140). This enthusiasm for Quintilian spread with humanism itself, reaching northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Martin Luther, the German theologian and ecclesiastical reformer, “claimed that he preferred Quintilian to almost all authors, “in that he educates and at the same time demonstrates eloquence, that is, he teaches in word and in deed most happily”” (140).

It has been argued by a musicologist, Ursula Kirkendale that the composition of Johann Sebastian Bach's Das Musikalische Opfer (The Musical Offering, BWV 1079), was closely connected with the Institutio Oratoria. Among Bach's duties during his tenure at Leipzig (1723–50), was teaching Latin; his early training included rhetoric. (Philologist and Rector of the Leipzig Thomasschule, Johann Matthias Gesner, for whom Bach composed a cantata in 1729, published a substantial Quintilian edition with a long footnote in Bach's honor.)

After this high point, Quintilian’s influence seems to have lessened somewhat, although he is mentioned by the English poet Alexander Pope in his versified “An Essay on Criticism”:

In grave Quintilian’s copious works we find

The justest rules and clearest method join’d (lines 669-70).

In addition, “he is often mentioned by writers like Montaigne and Lessing ... but he made no major contribution to intellectual history, and by the nineteenth century he seemed to be ... rather little read and rarely edited” (Gwynn, 140-1). However, in his celebrated Autobiography, John Stuart Mill (arguably the nineteenth-century's most influential English intellectual) spoke highly of Quintilian as a force in his early education. He wrote that Quintilian, while little-read in Mill's day due to "his obscure style and to the scholastic details of which many parts of his treatise are made up," was "seldom sufficiently appreciated." "His book," Mill continued, "is a kind of encyclopaedia of the thoughts of the ancients on the whole field of education and culture; and I have retained through life many valuable ideas which I can distinctly trace to my reading of him ..."

In more recent times, Quintilian appears to have made another upward turn. He is frequently included in anthologies of literary criticism, and is an integral part of the history of education. He is believed to be the “earliest spokesman for a child-centered education” (141), which is discussed above under his early childhood education theories. As well, he has something to offer students of speech, professional writing, and rhetoric, because of the great detail with which he covers the rhetorical system. His discussions of tropes and figures also formed the foundation of contemporary works on the nature of figurative language, including the post-structuralist and formalist theories. For example, the works of Jacques Derrida on the failure of language to impart the truth of the objects it is meant to represent would not be possible without Quintilian’s assumptions about the function of figurative language and tropes.