Quintilian - Placement of Quintilian’s Rhetoric

Placement of Quintilian’s Rhetoric

Quintilian references many authors in the Institutio Oratoria before providing his own definition of rhetoric (Quintilian 10.1.3). His rhetoric is chiefly defined by Cato the Elder’s vir bonus, dicendi peritus, which translates to the “the good man speaking well” (Quintilian 12.1.1). Later on, he states: “I should like the orator I am training to be a sort of Roman Wise Man” (Quintilian 12.2.7). Quintilian also “insists that his ideal orator is no philosopher because the philosopher does not take as a duty participation in civic life; this is constitutive of Quintilian's (and Isocrates' and Cicero's) ideal orator" (Walzer, 26). Though he calls for imitation, he also urges the orator to use this knowledge to inspire his own original invention (Quintilian 10.2.4).

No author receives greater praise in the Institutio Oratoria than Cicero: “For who can instruct with greater thoroughness, or more deeply stir the emotions? Who has ever possessed such a gift of charm?” (Quintilian 10.1.109). Quintilian’s definition of rhetoric shares many similarities with that of Cicero, one being the importance of the speaker’s moral character (Logie). Like Cicero, Quintilian also believes that “history and philosophy can increase an orator’s command of copia and style;" they differ in that Quintilian “features the character of the orator, as well as the art” (Walzer, 36-7).

In Book II, Quintilian sides with Plato’s assertion in the Phaedrus that the rhetorician must be just: “In the Phaedrus, Plato makes it even clearer that the complete attainment of this art is even impossible without the knowledge of justice, an opinion in which I heartily concur" (Quintilian 2.15.29). Their views are further similar in their treatment of “(1) the inseparability, in more respects than one, of wisdom, goodness, and eloquence; and (2) the morally ideological nature of rhetoric. For both, there are conceptual connections between rhetoric and justice which rule out the possibility of amorally neutral conception of rhetoric. For both, rhetoric is ‘speaking well,’ and for both ‘speaking well’ means speaking justly" (Logie, 371).