When Vespasian established a state professorship of rhetoric in Rome he appointed to it a man who, like so many authors of this Silver Age, was of Spanish birth. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was born at Calagurris (A.D. 35?), went to Rome to study oratory, and opened a school of rhetoric there which numbered Tacitus and the younger Pliny among its pupils. Juvenal describes him in his prime as handsome, noble, wise, well bred, with a fine voice and delivery, and a senatorial dignity. In old age he retired to write for the guidance of his son the classic treatment of his subject, the Institutio Oratoria (96).
I thought that this work would be the most precious part of the inheritance of my son, whose ability was so remarkable that it called for the most anxious cultivation on the part of his father. . . . Night and day I pursued this design, and hastened its completion in the fear that death might cut me off with my task unfinished. Then misfortune overwhelmed me with such suddenness that the success of my labors now interests no one less than myself. … I have lost him of whom I had formed the highest expectations, and in whom I reposed all the hopes that should solace my old age.117
His wife had died at nineteen, leaving him two sons; one of these had died at the age of five, “robbing me, as it were, of one of my two eyes”; now the other went, leaving the old teacher “to outlive all my nearest and dearest.”
He defines rhetoric as the science of speaking well. The training of the orator should begin before birth: it is desirable that he should come of educated parents, so that he may receive correct speech and good manners from the very air he breathes; it is impossible to become both educated and a gentleman in one generation. The future orator should study music, to give him an ear for harmony;, the dance, to give him grace and rhythm; drama, to animate his eloquence with gesture and action; gymnastics, to keep him in health and strength; literature, to form his style, train his memory, and arm him with a treasury of great thoughts; science, to acquaint him with some understanding of nature; and philosophy, to mold his character on the dictates of reason and the precepts of wise men. For all preparations will be of no avail unless integrity of conduct and nobility of spirit are present to generate an irresistible sincerity of speech. Then the student must write as much as possible and with the utmost care. It is a hard training, and “I trust,” says Quintilian, “that no one among my readers would think of calculating its monetary value.”118
The oration itself has five phases: conception, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Having chosen his subject and clearly conceived his purpose, let the orator gather his material, from observation, inquiry, and books, and arrange it both logically and psychologically—so that each part will be in its proper place and lead as naturally to the next as in geometry.119 A well-organized address will consist of introduction (exordium), proposition, proof, refutation, and peroration. The speech should be written out only if it is to be fully memorized; otherwise fragmentary memories of the written form will obstruct and confuse an extempore style. If it is written it must be with care. “Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly”; shun the lazy “luxury of dictation now so fashionable among writers.”120 “Clearness is the first essential,” then brevity, beauty, and vigor. Correct repeatedly and stoically:
Erasure is as important as writing. Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute. . . . The best method of correction is to put aside for a time what we have written, so that when we come to it again it may have an aspect of novelty, as of being another man’s work; in this way we may preserve ourselves from regarding our writings with the affection that we lavish upon a newborn child.121
Delivery, like composition, should touch the emotions, but avoid exuberant gesticulation. “It is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent,” but “shout and bellow with uplifted hand, pant, wag your head, smite your hands together, slap your thigh, your breast, your forehead, and you will go straight to the heart of the dingier members of your audience.”122
To all this excellent counsel Quintilian adds, in his twelfth book, the best literary criticism that has survived from antiquity. He enters with zest into the ancient and modern war between the ancients and the moderns, and finds truth precariously in the middle. He does not, like Fronto, wish to return to the rude simplicity of Cato and Ennius, but still more he would shun the “voluptuous and affected” fluency of Seneca; he prefers, as a model for students, the virile yet polished speech of Cicero, the one Roman writer who had in his line surpassed the Greeks.123 Quintilian’s own style is often that of a schoolmaster, moribund with definitions, classification, and distinctions, and rising to eloquence only in denouncing Seneca; but it is a vigorous style, whose dignity is lightened now and then with touches of humanity and wit. Behind the good sense of the words we feel always the quiet goodness of the man; it is a moral stimulus to read him. Perhaps the Romans who had the privilege of his instruction took from it some part of the moral renovation that, more than any brilliance of letters, ennobled the age of the younger Pliny and Tacitus.