INTRODUCTION.I.Life of Quintilian.Itwould be possible to state in a very few lines all that is certainly known about Quintilian’s personal history; but much would remain to be said in order to convey an adequate idea of the large place he must have filled in the era of which he is so typical a representative. The period of his activity at Rome is nearly co-extensive with the reign of the Flavian emperors,—Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. For twenty years he was the recognised head of the teaching profession in the capital, and a large proportion of those who came to maturity in the days of Trajan and Hadrian must have received their intellectual training in his school. It is in itself a sign of the tendencies of the age that Quintilian should have enjoyed the immediate patronage of the reigning emperor in the conduct of work which would formerly have attracted little notice. In earlier days the profession of teaching had been held in low repute at Rome1. The first attempt to open a school of rhetoric, inB.C.94, was looked on with the greatest suspicion and disfavour. Even Cicero adopts a tone of apology in the rhetorical text-books which he wrote for the instruction of others. But now all was changed, and education had come to be, as it was in a still greater degree under Nerva, Trajan, and the Antonines, a department of the government itself. Vespasian was the founder of a new dynasty; and, though he had little culture to boast of himself, he was shrewd enough to appreciate the advantages to be derived from systematising the education of the Roman youth, and maintaining friendly relationswith those to whom it was entrusted. Quintilian, for his part, seems to have diligently seconded, in the scholastic sphere, his patron’s efforts to efface the memory of the time of trouble and unrest which had followed the extinction of the Julian line in the person of Nero. After his retirement from the active duties of his profession, he received the consular insignia from Domitian,—the promotion of a teacher of rhetoric to the highest dignity in the State being regarded as a most unexampled phenomenon by the conservative opinion of the day, which had failed to recognise the significance of the alliance between prince and pedagogue. The interest with which the publication of theInstitutio Oratoriowas looked forward to, at the close of his laborious professional career, is sufficient evidence of the authoritative position Quintilian had gained for himself at Rome. It was a tribute not only to the successful teacher, but also to the man of letters who, conscious that his was an age of literary decadence, sought to probe the causes of the national decline and to counteract its evil influences.Like so many of the distinguished men of his time, Quintilian was a Spaniard by birth. There must have been something in the Spanish national character that rendered the inhabitants of that country peculiarly susceptible to the influences of Roman culture: certainly no province assimilated more rapidly than Spain the civilisation of its conquerors. The expansion of Rome may be clearly traced in the history of her literature. Just as Italy, rather than the imperial city itself, had supplied the court of Augustus with its chiefest literary ornaments, so now Spain sends up to the centre of attraction for all things Roman a band of authors united, if by nothing else, at least by the ties of a common origin. Pomponius Mela is said to have come from a place called Cingentera, on the bay of Algesiras; Columella was a native of Gades, Martial of Bilbilis; the two Senecas and Lucan were born in Corduba. The emperor Trajan came from Italica, near Seville; while Hadrian belonged to a family which had long been settled there. Quintilian’s birthplace was the town of Calagurris (Calahorra) on the Ebro, memorable in previous history only for the resistance which it enabled Sertorius to offer to Metellus and Pompeius: it was the last place that submitted after the murder of the insurgent general inB.C.72.In most of the older editions of Quintilian an anonymous Life appears, the author of which (probably either Omnibonus Leonicenus or Laurentius Valla) prefers a conjecture of his own to the ‘books of the time,’ and makes out that Quintilian was born in Rome. His main argument is that Martial does not include his name among those of the distinguished authors to whom he refers as being of Spanish origin (e.g. Epigr. i.61 and 49), though he addresses him separately in complimentary terms (Epigr. ii. 90). Against this we may set, however, the line in which Ausonius embodies what was evidently a well-known and accepted tradition (Prof. i. 7):—Adserat usque licet Fabium Calagurris alumnum;and the statement of Hieronymus in theEusebian Chronicle:—Quintilianus, ex Hispania Calagurritanus, primus Romae publicam scholam[aperuit]. The latter extract carries additional weight if we accept the conjecture of Reifferscheid2that Jerome here follows the authority of Suetonius (Roth, p. 272) in his work on the grammarians and rhetoricians.The fact of Quintilian’s Spanish origin may therefore be regarded as fully established, though we cannot cite the authority of Quintilian himself on the subject. His removal to Rome, at a very early period of his life, would naturally make him more of a Roman than a Spaniard; and this is probably the reason why he nowhere refers to the accident of his birth-place. Indeed his work does not lend itself to autobiographical revelations. Most of his reminiscences, some of which occur in the Tenth Book (1 §§23and86,3 §12: cp. v. 7, 7: vi. 1, 14: xii. 11, 3) are suggested by some detail connected with his subject. Apart from the famous introduction to Book VI, where his grief for the loss of his wife and two sons is allowed to interrupt the continuity of his argument, he speaks of his father only once (ix. 3, 73), and then simply to quote, not without some diffidence, abon motof his in illustration of a figure of speech. The father was himself a rhetorician, and seems to have taught the subject both at Calagurris and also after the family removed to Rome: whether he is identical with the Quintilianus mentioned as a declaimer of moderate reputation by the elder Seneca (Controv. x. praef. 2: cp. ib. 33, 19) cannot now be ascertained.The date of Quintilian’s birth has been variously given asA.D.42,A.D.38, andA.D.35, the last being now most commonly adopted. It cannot be determined with certainty, though a few considerations may here be adduced to show why it seems necessary to discard any theory that would put it afterA.D.38. Dodwell, in his ‘Annales Quintilianei’ (see Burmann’s edition, vol. ii. p. 1117), arrived at the yearA.D.42, after a careful examination of all the passages on which he thought it allowable to base an inference. But Quintilian tells us himself that he was a young man (nobis adulescentibusvi. 1, 14) at the trial of Cossutianus Capito,which we know from Tacitus (Ann. xiii. 33) took place inA.D.57: a fact which is in itself enough to show that Dodwell is at least two years too late. Another indication is derived from the references which Quintilian makes to his teacher Domitius Afer, who is known to have died at a ripe old age inA.D.59: cp. xii. 11, 3vidi ego ... Domitium Afrum valde senem: v. 7, 7quem adulescentulus senem colui: x.1, 86quae ex Afro Domitio iuvenis excepi. Unfortunately we do not know the date of the trial of Volusenus Catulus referred to in x.1, 23: Quintilian was a boy at the time (nobis pueris). In the preface to Book VI he writes like an old man: this appears especially in the reference he makes to the wife whom he had lost and who was only nineteen,—aetate tam puellari praesertim meae comparata§5. If we may infer that Quintilian was nearer sixty than fifty when he wrote these words, inA.D.93 or 94, we may be certain that he was born not later thanA.D.38, and probably two or three years earlier.Quintilian received his early education at Rome, and his father’s position as a teacher of rhetoric, as well as the whole tendency of the education of the day, no doubt gave it a rhetorical turn from the very first. Even boys at school practised declamation, as may be seen from the following passage of theInstitutio:—‘Non inutilem scio servatum esse a praeceptoribus meis morem, qui cum pueros in classes distribuerant, ordinem dicendi secundum vires ingenii dabant; et ita superiore loco quisque declamabat ut praecedere profectu videbatur. Huius rei iudicia praebebantur: ea nobis ingens palma, ducere vero classem multo pulcherrimum. Nec de hoc semel decretum erat: tricesimus dies reddebat victo certaminis potestatem. Ita nec superior successu curam remittebat, et dolor victum ad depellendam ignominiam concitabat. Id nobis acriores ad studia dicendi faces subdidisse quam exhortationem docentium, paedagogorum custodiam, vota parentium, quantum animi mei coniectura colligere possum, contenderim.’—i. 2, 23-25.The same style of exercise was kept up at a later stage, when the boy passed into the hands of a professed teacher of rhetoric, such as the notorious Remmius Palaemon, who is said by the scholiast on Juvenal (vi. 451) to have been Quintilian’s master:—‘Solebant praeceptores mei neque inutili et nobis etiam iucundo genere exercitationis praeparare nos coniecturalibus causis, cum quaerere atque exsequi iuberent “cur armata apud Lacedaemonios Venus” et “quid ita crederetur Cupido puer atque volucer et sagittis ac face armatus” et similia, in quibus scrutabamur voluntatem.’—ii. 4, 26.He now came into contact with, and listened to the eloquence of, the most celebrated orators of the day. In his relations with the greatest ofthese, Domitius Afer, Quintilian seems to have acted on the maxim which he himself lays down for the budding advocate:oratorem sibi aliquem, quod apud maiores fieri solebat, deligat, quem sequatur, quem imiteturx.5, 19. To Afer he attached himself (adsectabar Domitium AfrumPlin. Ep. ii. 14, 10), and was in all probability by him initiated in the business of the law-courts and public life generally: cp. v. 7, 7adulescentulus senem colui(Domitium). In this passage Afer is said to have written two books on the examination of witnesses; and from vi. 3, 42 it would appear that his ‘dicta’ or witticisms were sufficiently distinguished to merit the honour of publication. He had held high office under Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, and his pre-eminence at the bar was undisputed: xii. 11, 3principem fuisse quondam fori non erat dubium. In his review of Latin oratory, Quintilian gives him high praise:arte et toto genere dicendi praeferendus, et quem in numero veterum habere non timeasx.1, 118. The pupil was fortunate therefore in his master, and he drew upon his reminiscences of Afer’s teaching when he himself came to instruct others (Plin. l.c.). Among other notable orators of the day were Servilius Nonianus (x.1, 102), Iulius Africanus (x.1, 118: xii. 10, 11), Iulius Secundus (x.1, 120:3, 12: xii. 10, 11), Galerius Trachalus (x.1, 119: xii. 10, 11), and Vibius Crispus (ibid.).When he was about twenty-five years of age some motive induced Quintilian to return to Calagurris, his native town; and there he spent several years in the practice of his profession as teacher and barrister. We know that he came back to Rome with Galba inA.D.68: the evidence for this is again the statement made by Hieronymus in the Eusebian Chronicle,M. Fabius Quintilianus Romam a Galba perducitur. Galba had been governor of Hispania Tarraconensis under Nero (A.D.61-68), and it is not improbable that Quintilian, when he returned to his native country, was in some way attached to his official retinue; the numerousbons motswhich he records in the third chapter of the Sixth Book (§§62, 64, 66, 80, 90) seem to point to a certain amount of personal intercourse between himself and the future emperor3.At Rome Quintilian must soon have proved himself thoroughly qualified for the work of teaching and training the young. The imperial countenance afterwards shown him by Vespasian was in all probability only an official expression of the esteem felt in the Roman community for one who was serving with such distinction in a sphere of which the importance was coming now to be more adequately recognised. Quintilian was not only a learned man and a great teacher: he was a greatmoral power in the midst of a people which had long been demoralised by the vices of its rulers. The fundamental principle of his teaching,non posse oratorem esse nisi virum bonum(i. pr. §9 and xii. 1), shows the high ideal he cherished and the wide view he took of the opportunities of his position. He felt himself strong enough to make a protest against the literary influence of Seneca, then the popular favourite, and to endeavour to recall a vitiated taste to more rigorous standards:corruptum et omnibus vitiis fractum dicendi genus revocare ad severiora iudicia contendo(x.1, 125). And when, in the evening of his days, he wrote his great treatise on the ‘technical training’ of the orator, it was from himself and his own successful practice that he drew many of his most cogent illustrations, e.g. vi. 2, 36, and (in regard to his powers of memory) xi. 2, 39 and iv. 2, 86.In the earlier years of his career at Rome, before he became absorbed in the work of teaching, Quintilian must have had a considerable amount of practice at the bar. He tells us himself of a speech which he published,ductus iuvenali cupiditate gloriaeviii. 2, 24. It was of a common type. A certain Naevius Arpinianus was accused of having killed his wife, who had fallen from a window; and we may infer with certainty from the tone of Quintilian’s reference to the circumstances of the case that he succeeded in securing the acquittal of Naevius—more fortunate than the wife-killer of whom we read in Tacitus (Ann. iv. 22). A more distinguished cause was that of Berenice, the Jewish Queen before whom St. Paul appeared (Acts xxv. 13), and whose subsequent visit to Rome was connected with the ascendency she had established over the heart of the youthful Titus (Tac. Hist. ii. 2: Suet. Tit. 7). We can only speculate on the nature of the issue involved, as Quintilian confines himself to a bare statement of fact—ego pro regina Berenice apud ipsam causam dixiiv. 1, 19. It was in all probability a civil suit brought or defended by Berenice against some Jewish countryman; and the phenomenon of the queen herself presiding over a trial in which she was an interested party is accounted for by the hypothesis that, at least in civil suits, Roman tolerance allowed the Jews to settle their own disputes according to their national law. On such occasions the person of highest rank in the community to which the disputants belonged might naturally be designated to preside over the tribunal4.In another case, Quintilian seems to have shown some of the dexterity attributed to him in the oft-quoted line of Juvenal (vi. 280)Dic aliquem, sodes, dic, Quintiliane, colorem. He was counsel for a woman who had been party to an arrangement by which the provisions of the Voconian law (passedB.C.169 to prevent the accumulation of property in the hands of females) had been evaded by the not uncommon method of a fraudulent disposition to a third person5. Quintilian’s client was accused of having produced a forged will. This charge it was easy to rebut, though it rendered necessary the explanation that the heirs named in the will had really undertaken to hand the property over to the woman; and if this explanation were openly given it would involve the loss of the estate. There is an evident tone of satisfaction in Quintiiian’s description of what happened:ita ergo fuit nobis agendum ut iudices illud intellegerent factum, delatores non possent adprehendere ut dictum, et contigit utrumque(ix. 2, 74).Unlike his great model Cicero, who was considered most effective in theperoratioof a great case, where the work was divided among several pleaders, Quintilian was generally relied on to state a case (ponere causam) in its main lines for subsequent elaboration:me certe, quantacunque nostris experimentis habenda est fides, fecisse hoc in foro, quotiens ita desiderabat utilitas, probantibus et eruditis et iis qui iudicabant, scio: et (quod non adroganter dixerim, quia sunt plurimi quibuscum egi qui me refellere possint si mentiar) fere a me ponendae causae officium exigebaturiv. 2, 86. His methodical habit of mind would render him specially effective for this department of work. Other orators may have been more brilliant, more full of fire, and more able to work upon the feelings of an audience: if Quintilian had not the ‘grand style’—if he represents the type of an orator that is ‘made’ rather than ‘born’—we may at least believe that he was unsurpassed for judicious, moderate, and effective statement. His model in this as in other matters was probably Domitius Afer, of whom Pliny says (Ep. ii. 14, 10)apud decemviros dicebat graviter et lente, hoc enim illi actionis genus erat. His character and training would secure him a place apart from the common herd. ‘Among the orators of the day, some ignorant and coarse, having left mean occupations, without any preliminary study, for the bar, where they made up in audacity for lack of talent, and in noisy conceit for a defective knowledgeof law—others trained in the practice of delation to every form of trickery and violence—Quintilian, honest, able, and moderate stood by himself6.’It was after Quintilian had attained some distinction in the practice of his profession, probably in the year 72, that his activity became invested with an official and public character. We learn the facts from Suetonius’s Life of Vespasian (ch. 18):primus e fisco latinis graecisque rhetoribus annua centena constituit: and the Eusebian chronicle (see Roth’s Suetonius, p. 272),Quintilianus, ex Hispania Calagurritanus, qui primus Romae publicam(‘state-supported’)scholam[aperuit]et salarium e fisco accepit, claruit—the zenith of his fame being placed between the years 85 and 89A.D.Vespasian, in fact, created and endowed a professorial Chair of Rhetoric, and Quintilian was its first occupant. He thus became the official head of the foremost school of oratory at Rome, and the ‘supreme controller of its restless youth’:Quintiliane, vagae moderator summe iuventae,Gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, togae.—Mart. ii. 90, 1-2.In this capacity he must have exercised the greatest possible influence on the rising youth of Rome. The younger Pliny was his pupil, and evidently retained a grateful memory of the instruction which he received from him: Ep. ii. 14, 9 and vi. 6, 3. The same is true, in all probability, of Pliny’s friend Tacitus, who has much in common with Quintilian: possibly also of Suetonius. If Juvenal was not actually his pupil,—he is believed to have practised declamation till well on in life,—we may infer from the complimentary references which occur in his Satires that he at least appreciated Quintilian’s work and recognised its healthy influence7.After a public career at Rome, extending over a period of twenty years8, Quintilian definitely retired from both teaching and pleading atthe bar. He seems to have profited by the example of his model, Domitius Afer, who would have done better if he had retired earlier (xii. 11, 3): Quintilian thought it was well to go while he would still be missed,—et praecipiendi munus iam pridem deprecati sumus et in foro quoque dicendi, quid honestissimum finem putabamus desinere dum desideraremur, ii. 12, 12. The wealth which he had acquired by the practice of his profession (Juv. vii. 186-189) enabled him to go into retirement with a light heart. The first-fruits of his leisure was a treatise in which he sought to account for that decline in eloquence for which theInstitutio Oratoriawas afterwards to provide a remedy. It was entitledDe causis corruptae eloquentiae, and was long confounded with the Dialogue on Oratory, now ascribed to Tacitus: he refers to this work in vi. pr. §3: viii. 6, 76: possibly also in ii. 4, 42: v. 12, 23: vi. pr. §3: viii. 3, 58, and 6, 769. This treatise is no longer extant, and we have lost also the two booksArtis Rhetoricae, which were published under Quintilian’s name (1 pr. §7),neque editi a me neque in hoc comparati: namque alterum sermonem per biduum habitum pueri quibus id praestabatur exceperant, alterum pluribus sane diebus, quantum notando consequi potuerant, interceptum boni iuvenes sed nimium amantes mei temerario editionis honore vulgaverant10. In a recent edition of the ‘Minor Declamations’ (M. Fabii Quintiliani declamationes quae supersunt cxlv Lipsiae, 1884), Const. Ritter endeavours to show that this is the work referred to in the passage quoted above, from the preface to theInstitutio: cp. Die Quintilianischen Declamationen, Freiburg i.B., undTübingen, 1881, p. 246 sqq.11Meister’s view, however, is that, like the ‘Greater Declamations,’ which are generally admitted to have been composed at a later date, the ‘Minor Declamations’ also were written subsequently either by Quintilian himself or (more probably) by imitators who had caught his style and were glad to commend their compositions by the aid of his great name. Even in his busy professional days Quintilian had suffered from the zeal of pirate publishers: he tells us (vii. 2, 24) that several pleadings were in circulation under his name which he could by no means claim as entirely his own:nam ceterae, quae sub nomine meo feruntur, neglegentia excipientium in quaestum notariorum corruptae minimam partem mei habent.While living in retirement, and engaged on the composition of his work, Quintilian received a fresh mark of Imperial favour, this time from Domitian. This prince had adopted two grand-nephews, whom he destined to succeed him on the throne,—the children of his niece Flavia Domitilla, and of Flavius Clemens, a cousin whom he associated with himself about this time in the duties of the consulship. They were rechristened Vespasian and Domitian (Suet. Dom. 15), and the care of their education was entrusted to Quintilian (A.D.93). He accepted it with fulsome expressions of gratitude and appreciation12; but did not exercise it for long13, as the children, with their parents, became the victims of the tyrant’s capriciousness shortly before his murder, and were ruined as rapidly as they had risen. Flavius Clemens was put to death, and his wife Domitilla, probably accompanied by her two sons, was sent into exile. They seem to have embraced the Jewish faith; and it is interesting to speculate on the possibility that through intercourse with them, and with their children, Quintilian may have come into contact with a religion which was the forerunner of that which was destined soon afterwards to achieve so universal a triumph.It was while he was acting as tutor to the two princes that Quintilian received, through the influence of their father Flavius Clemens, the compliment of the consular insignia. This we learn from Ausonius, himself the recipient of a similar favour from his pupil Gratian:Quintilianus per Clementem ornamenta consularia sortitus, honestamenta nominis potius videtur quam insignia potestatis habuisse. It was probably in allusion tothis promotion, unexampled at that time in the case of a teacher of rhetoric, that Juvenal wrote (vii. 197-8)—Si Fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul;Si volet haec eadem, fies de consule rhetor:while another parallel is chronicled by Pliny, Ep. iv. 11, 1praetorius hic modo ... nunc eo decidit ut exsul de senatore, rhetor de oratore fieret. Itaque ipse in praefatione dixit dolenter el graviter: ‘quos tibi Fortuna, ludos facis?’ facis enim ex professoribus senatores, ex senatoribus professores.The flattery with which Quintilian loads the emperor for these and similar favours is the only stain on a character otherwise invariably manly, honourable, and straightforward. It is startling for us to hear that monster of iniquity, the last of the Flavian line, invoked as an ‘upright guardian of morals’ (sanctissimus censoriv. pr. §3), even when he was ‘tearing in pieces the almost lifeless world.’ There may have been a grain of sincerity in the compliments which Quintilian, like Pliny, pays to his literary ability. Domitian’s poetical productions are said not to have been altogether wanting in merit; and his attachment to literary pursuits is shown by the festivals he instituted in honour of Minerva and Jupiter Capitolinus, in which rhetorical, musical, and artistic contests were a prominent feature (see on x.1, 91). But this is no justification for the fulsome language employed by Quintilian in the introduction to the Fourth Book, where the emperor is spoken of as the protecting deity of literary men:ut in omnibus ita in eloquentia eminentissimum ... quo neque praesentius aliud nec studiis magis propitium numen est; nor for his profession of belief that nothing but the cares of government prevented Domitian from becoming the greatest poet of Rome:Germanicum Augustum ab institutis studiis deflexit cura terrarum, parumque dis visum est esse eum maximum poetarumx.1, 91sq. Few would recognise Domitian in the following reference:laudandum in quibusdam quod geniti immortales, quibusdam quod immortalitatem virtute sint consecuti: quod pietas principis nostri praesentium quoque temporum decus fecitiii. 7, 9. Such servility can only be partially explained by Quintilian’s official relations to the Court and by the circumstances of the time at which he wrote. It was a vice of the age: Quintilian shares it with Martial, Statius, Silius Italicus, and Valerius Flaccus. The indignant silence which Tacitus and Juvenal maintained during the horrors of this reign is a better expression of the virtue of old Rome, which seems to have burned with steadier flame in the hearts of her genuine sons than in those of the ‘new men’from the provinces, with neither pride of family nor pride of nationality to save them from the corrupting influences of their surroundings14.That Quintilian acquired considerable wealth, partly as a teacher and partly by work at the bar, is evident from the pointed references made by Juvenal in the seventh Satire. After showing how insignificant are the fees paid by Roman parents for their children’s education, when compared with their other expenses, the satirist suddenly breaks off,—unde igitur tot Quintilianus habet saltus?How does it come about (if his profession is so unremunerative) that Quintilian owns so many estates? The only answer which Juvenal can give to this conundrum is that the great teacher was one of the fortunate: ‘he is a lucky man, and your lucky man, like Horace’s Stoic, unites every good quality in himself, and can expect everything15.’ We must remember however, that, while Quintilian acquired wealth in the practice of his profession, no charge is made against him as having placed his abilities at the disposal of an unscrupulous ruler for his own advancement. Under Nero, Marcellus Eprius assisted in procuring the condemnation of Thrasea, and received over £42,000 for the service (Tac. Ann. xvi. 33): if Quintilian’s name had ever been associated with such a trial, Juvenal would have been more direct in his reference. But with Quintilian, as with so many others, the advantages of position and fortune were counterbalanced by grave domestic losses. In a less rhetorical age the memorable introduction to the Sixth Book of theInstitutiowould perhaps have taken a rather more simple form; but it is none the less a testimony to the warm human heart of the writer, now a childless widower. He had married, when already well on in life, a young girl whose death at the early age of nineteen made him feel as if in her he had lost a daughter rather than a wife:cum omni virtute quae in feminas cadit functa insanabilem attulit marito dolorem, tum aetate tam puellari, praesertim meae comparata, potest et ipsa numerari inter vulnera orbitatisvi. pr. 5. She left him two sons, the younger of whom did not long survive her; he had just completed his fifth year when he died. The father now concentrated all his affectionon the elder, and it was with his education in view that he made all haste to complete his great work, which he considered would be the best inheritance he could leave to him,—hanc optimum partem relicturus hereditatis videbar, ut si me, quod aequum et optabile fuit, fata intercepissent, praeceptore tamen patre utereturib. §1. But the blow again descended, and his house was desolate:at me fortuna id agentem diebus ac noctibus festinantemque metu meae mortalitatis ita subito prostravit ut laboris mei fructus ad neminem minus quam ad me pertineret. Illum enim, de quo summa conceperam et in quo spem unicam senectutis reponebam, repetito vulnere orbitatis amisiib. §2.This would be about the year 94A.D., and theInstitutio Oratoriais said to have seen the light in 95. After that we hear no more of Quintilian. Domitian was assassinated in 96, and under the newrégimeit is possible that the favourite of the Flavian emperors may have been under a cloud. But his work was done; even if he lived on for a few years longer in retirement, his career had virtually closed with the publication of his great treatise. It used to be believed that he lived into the reign of Hadrian, and died about 118A.D., but this idea is founded on a misconception16. Probably he did not even see the accession of Nerva in 96: if he did, he must have died soon afterwards, for there are two letters of Pliny’s (one written between 97 and 100, and the other about 105) in which Pliny does not speak of his old teacher as of one still alive.II.The Institutio Oratoria.Though Quintilian spent little more than two years on the composition of theInstitutio Oratorio, his work really embodies the experience of alifetime. No doubt much of it lay ready to his hand, even before he began to write, and he would willingly have kept it longer; but the solicitations of Trypho, the publisher, were too much for him. His letter to Trypho shows that he fully appreciated the magnitude of his task; and there is even the suggestion that (like many a busy teacher since his time) he only realised when called upon to publish that he had not covered the whole ground of his subject17. The opening words of the introduction (post impetratam studiis meis quietem, quae per viginti annos erudiendis iuvenibus impenderam, &c.) show that theInstitutiowas the work of his retirement: and various indications lead us to fix the date of its composition as falling betweenA.D.93 and 95. The introduction to the Fourth Book was evidently written when (probably in 93) Domitian had appointed Quintilian tutor to his grand-nephews; the Sixth Book, where he refers to his family losses, must have followed shortly afterwards; while the harshness of his references to the philosophers in the concluding portions of the work (cp. xi. 1, 30, xii. 3, 11, with 1, pr. 15, which may have been written, or at least revised, after the rest was finished) seems to suggest that their expulsion by Domitian (in 94) was already an accomplished fact18. The book is dedicated to Victorius Marcellus, to whom Statius also addresses the Fourth Book of hisSilvae, evidently as to a person of some consideration and an orator of repute (cp. Stat. Silv. iv. 4, 8, and 41 sq.). Marcellus had a son called Geta (Inst. Or. i. pr. 6: Stat. Silv. iv. 4, 71), and it was originally with a view to the education of this youth (erudiendo Getae tuo) that Quintilian associated the father’s name with his work. Geta is again referred to, along with Quintilian’s elder son, and also the grand-nephews of Domitian, in the introduction to the Fourth Book; but the opening words of the Sixth Book show that they are all gone, and the epilogue, at the conclusion of Book xii, is addressed to Marcellus on behoof of ‘studiosi iuvenes’ in general.The plan of theInstitutio Oratoriocannot be better given than in its author’s own words (i. pr. 21 sq.):Liber primus ea quae sunt ante officium rhetoris continebit. Secundo prima apud rhetorem elementa et quae de ipsa rhetorices substantia quaeruntur tractabimus, quinque deinceps inventioni (nam huic et dispositio subiungitur) quattuor elocutioni, in cuius partem memoria ac pronuntiatio veniunt, dabuntur. Unus accedet in quo nobis orator ipse informandus est, et qui mores eius, quae insuscipiendis, discendis, agendis causis ratio, quod eloquentiae genus, quis agendi debeat esse finis, quae post finem studia, quantum nostra valebit infirmitas, disseremus.The first book deals with what the pupil must learn before he goes to the rhetorician; it gives an account of home-training and school discipline, and contains also a statement of Quintilian’s views of grammar. The second book treats of rhetoric in general: the choice of a proper instructor, as well as his character and function, and the nature, principles, aims, and use of oratory. It is in these early books especially that Quintilian reveals the high tone which has made him an authority on educational morals, as well as rhetorical training: see especially i. 2, 8, where he enlarges on Juvenal’s dictum,maxima debetur puero reverentia; ii. 4, 10, where he advocates gentle and conciliatory methods in teaching; and ii. 2, 5,—a picture of the ideal teacher in language which might be applied to Quintilian himself19. The remaining books, except the twelfth, are devoted to the five ‘parts of rhetoric,’—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery (Cic. de Inv. i. 7, 9). In the third book we have a classification of the different kinds of oratory. Next he treats of the ‘different divisions of a speech, the purpose of the exordium, the proper form of a statement of facts, what constitutes the force of proofs, either in confirming our own assertions or refuting those of our adversary, and of the different powers of the peroration, whether it be regarded as a summary of the arguments previously used, or as a means of exciting the feelings of the judge rather than of refreshing his memory.’This brings us to the end of the sixth book, which closes with remarks on the uses of humour and of altercation20. The discussion of arrangement finishes with the seventh book, which is extremely technical: style (elocutio) is the main subject of the four books which follow. Of these the eighth and ninth treat of the elements of a good style,—such as perspicuity, ornament, &c.; the tenth of the practical studies and exercises (including a course of reading) by which the actual command of these elements may be obtained; while the eleventh deals with appropriateness (i.e. the different kinds of oratory which suit different audiences), memory, and delivery. The twelfth book—which Quintilian calls the most grave and important part of the whole work—treats of the high moral qualifications requisite in the perfect orator:just as the first book, introductory to the whole, describes the early training which should precede the technical studies of the orator, so the last book sets forth that ‘discipline of the whole man’ which is their crown and conclusion21. “Lastly, the experienced teacher gives advice when the public life of an orator should begin, and when it should end. Even then his activity will not come to an end. He will write the history of his times, will explain the law to those who consult him, will write, like Quintilian himself, a treatise on eloquence, or set forth the highest principles of morality. The young men will throng round and consult him as an oracle, and he will guide them as a pilot. What can be more honourable to a man than to teach that of which he has a thorough knowledge? ‘I know not,’ he concludes, ‘whether an orator ought not to be thought happiest at that period of his life when, sequestered from the world, devoted to retired study, unmolested by envy, and remote from strife, he has placed his reputation in a harbour of safety, experiencing while yet alive that respect which is more commonly offered after death, and observing how his character will be regarded by posterity22.’”TheInstitutio Oratoriadiffers from all other previous rhetorical treatises in the comprehensiveness of its aim and method. It is a complete manual for the training of the orator, from his cradle to the public platform. Founding on old Cato’s maxim, that the orator is thevir bonus dicendi peritus, Quintilian considers it necessary to take him at birth in order to secure the best results, as regards both goodness of character and skill in speaking. His work has therefore for us a double value and a twofold interest: it is a treatise on education in general, and on rhetorical education in particular. Throughout the whole, oratory is the end for the sake of which everything is undertaken,—the goal to which the entire moral and intellectual training of the student is to be directed. Quintilian’s high conception of his subject is reflected in the language of the ‘Dialogue on Oratory’:Studium quo non aliud in civitate nostra vel ad utilitatem fructuosius vel ad voluptatem dulcius vel ad dignitatem amplius vel ad urbis famam pulchrius vel ad totius imperii atque omnium gentium notitiam inlustrius excogitari potest(ch. 5). Though the field for the practical display of eloquence had been greatly limited bythe extinction of the old freedom of political life, rhetoric represented, in Quintilian’s day, the whole of education. It was to the Romans whatμουσικήwas to the Greeks, and was valued all the more by them because of its eminently practical purpose. The student of rhetoric must therefore be fully equipped. “Quintilian postulates the widest culture: there is no 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 fashion of the day, which hurried over preliminary cultivation, and allowed men to grow grey while declaiming in the schools, where nature and reality were forgotten. Yet he develops all the technicalities of rhetoric with a fulness to which we find no parallel in ancient literature. Even in this portion of the work the illustrations are so apposite and the style so dignified and yet sweet, that the modern reader, whose initial interest in rhetoric is of necessity faint, is carried along with much less fatigue than is necessary to master most parts of the rhetorical writings of Aristotle and Cicero. At all times the student feels that he is in the company of a high-toned Roman gentleman who, so far as he could do without ceasing to be a Roman, has taken up into his nature the best results of ancient culture in all its forms23.”It is in connection with the general rather than with the technical training of his pupils that Quintilian establishes a claim to rank with the highest educational authorities,—as for example in his insistence on the necessity of good example both at home24and in school, and on the respect due to the young25, as well as his catalogue of the qualifications required in the trainer of youth (ii. 2, 5: 4, 10), his protest against corporal punishment (i. 3, 14), and his consistent advocacy of the moral as well as the intellectual aspects of education. His system was conceived as a remedy for the existing state of things at Rome, where eloquence and the arts in general had, as Messalla puts it in the ‘Dialogue on Oratory,’ “declined from their ancient glory, not from the dearth of men, but from the indolence of the young, the carelessness of parents, the ignorance of teachers, and neglect of the old discipline26.” Under it parents and teachers were to be united in the effort to develop the moral and intellectual qualities of the Roman youth: and through education the state was to recover something of her old vigour and virtue.The work was expected with the greatest interest before its publication, and we may infer, from the high authority assigned to Quintilian in theliterature of the period, that it long held an honoured place in Roman schools. But it is curious that the earliest known references are not to theInstitutiobut to theDeclamationes. In an interesting chapter of the Introduction to a recent volume27, M. Fierville has gathered together all the references that occur in the literature of the early centuries of our era. Trebellius Pollio and Lactantius (both of the 3rd century) speak of the Declamations, and Ausonius (4th century) refers to Quintilian without naming his writings: the first definite mention of theInstitutiois made by Hilary of Poitiers (died 367) and afterwards by St. Jerome (died 420). Later Cassiodorus (468-562) pronounced a eulogy which may stand as proof of his high appreciation:Quintilianus tamen doctor egregius, qui post fluvios Tullianos singulariter valuit implere quae docuit, virum bonum dicendi peritum a prima aetate suscipiens, per cunctas artes ac disciplinas nobilium litterarum erudiendum esse monstravit, quem merito ad defendendum totius civitatis vota requirerent(de Arte Rhetor.—Rhet. Lat. Min., ed. Halm, p. 498). The Ars Rhetorica of Julius Victor (6th century) is largely borrowed from Quintilian: see Halm, praef. p. ix. Isidore, Bishop of Seville (570-630), studied Quintilian in conjunction with Aristotle and Cicero. After the Dark Age, Poggio’s discovery, at St. Gall in 1416, of a complete manuscript of Quintilian was ranked as one of the most important literary events in what we know now as the era of the Renaissance28. The great scholars of the fifteenth century worked hard at the emendation of the text. Theeditio princepswas given to the world by G. A. Campani in 1470; and in the concluding words of his preface the editor reflects something of the enthusiasm for his author which had already been expressed by Petrarch, Poggio, and others,—proinde de Quintiliano sic habe, post unam beatissimam et unicam felicitatem M. Tullii, quae fastigii loco suspicienda est omnibus et tamquam adoranda, hunc unum esse quem praecipuum habere possis in eloquentia ducem: quem si assequeris, quidquid tibi deerit ad cumulum consummationis id a natura desiderabis non ab arte deposces. This edition was followed in rapid succession by various others, so that by the end of the 16th century Quintilian had been edited a hundred times over29. The 17th century is not so rich in editions, but Quintilian still reigned in the schools as the great master of rhetoric: students of English literaturewill remember how Milton (Sonnet xi) uses the authority of his name when referring to the roughness of northern nomenclature:—
Itwould be possible to state in a very few lines all that is certainly known about Quintilian’s personal history; but much would remain to be said in order to convey an adequate idea of the large place he must have filled in the era of which he is so typical a representative. The period of his activity at Rome is nearly co-extensive with the reign of the Flavian emperors,—Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. For twenty years he was the recognised head of the teaching profession in the capital, and a large proportion of those who came to maturity in the days of Trajan and Hadrian must have received their intellectual training in his school. It is in itself a sign of the tendencies of the age that Quintilian should have enjoyed the immediate patronage of the reigning emperor in the conduct of work which would formerly have attracted little notice. In earlier days the profession of teaching had been held in low repute at Rome1. The first attempt to open a school of rhetoric, inB.C.94, was looked on with the greatest suspicion and disfavour. Even Cicero adopts a tone of apology in the rhetorical text-books which he wrote for the instruction of others. But now all was changed, and education had come to be, as it was in a still greater degree under Nerva, Trajan, and the Antonines, a department of the government itself. Vespasian was the founder of a new dynasty; and, though he had little culture to boast of himself, he was shrewd enough to appreciate the advantages to be derived from systematising the education of the Roman youth, and maintaining friendly relationswith those to whom it was entrusted. Quintilian, for his part, seems to have diligently seconded, in the scholastic sphere, his patron’s efforts to efface the memory of the time of trouble and unrest which had followed the extinction of the Julian line in the person of Nero. After his retirement from the active duties of his profession, he received the consular insignia from Domitian,—the promotion of a teacher of rhetoric to the highest dignity in the State being regarded as a most unexampled phenomenon by the conservative opinion of the day, which had failed to recognise the significance of the alliance between prince and pedagogue. The interest with which the publication of theInstitutio Oratoriowas looked forward to, at the close of his laborious professional career, is sufficient evidence of the authoritative position Quintilian had gained for himself at Rome. It was a tribute not only to the successful teacher, but also to the man of letters who, conscious that his was an age of literary decadence, sought to probe the causes of the national decline and to counteract its evil influences.
Like so many of the distinguished men of his time, Quintilian was a Spaniard by birth. There must have been something in the Spanish national character that rendered the inhabitants of that country peculiarly susceptible to the influences of Roman culture: certainly no province assimilated more rapidly than Spain the civilisation of its conquerors. The expansion of Rome may be clearly traced in the history of her literature. Just as Italy, rather than the imperial city itself, had supplied the court of Augustus with its chiefest literary ornaments, so now Spain sends up to the centre of attraction for all things Roman a band of authors united, if by nothing else, at least by the ties of a common origin. Pomponius Mela is said to have come from a place called Cingentera, on the bay of Algesiras; Columella was a native of Gades, Martial of Bilbilis; the two Senecas and Lucan were born in Corduba. The emperor Trajan came from Italica, near Seville; while Hadrian belonged to a family which had long been settled there. Quintilian’s birthplace was the town of Calagurris (Calahorra) on the Ebro, memorable in previous history only for the resistance which it enabled Sertorius to offer to Metellus and Pompeius: it was the last place that submitted after the murder of the insurgent general inB.C.72.
In most of the older editions of Quintilian an anonymous Life appears, the author of which (probably either Omnibonus Leonicenus or Laurentius Valla) prefers a conjecture of his own to the ‘books of the time,’ and makes out that Quintilian was born in Rome. His main argument is that Martial does not include his name among those of the distinguished authors to whom he refers as being of Spanish origin (e.g. Epigr. i.61 and 49), though he addresses him separately in complimentary terms (Epigr. ii. 90). Against this we may set, however, the line in which Ausonius embodies what was evidently a well-known and accepted tradition (Prof. i. 7):—
Adserat usque licet Fabium Calagurris alumnum;
and the statement of Hieronymus in theEusebian Chronicle:—Quintilianus, ex Hispania Calagurritanus, primus Romae publicam scholam[aperuit]. The latter extract carries additional weight if we accept the conjecture of Reifferscheid2that Jerome here follows the authority of Suetonius (Roth, p. 272) in his work on the grammarians and rhetoricians.
The fact of Quintilian’s Spanish origin may therefore be regarded as fully established, though we cannot cite the authority of Quintilian himself on the subject. His removal to Rome, at a very early period of his life, would naturally make him more of a Roman than a Spaniard; and this is probably the reason why he nowhere refers to the accident of his birth-place. Indeed his work does not lend itself to autobiographical revelations. Most of his reminiscences, some of which occur in the Tenth Book (1 §§23and86,3 §12: cp. v. 7, 7: vi. 1, 14: xii. 11, 3) are suggested by some detail connected with his subject. Apart from the famous introduction to Book VI, where his grief for the loss of his wife and two sons is allowed to interrupt the continuity of his argument, he speaks of his father only once (ix. 3, 73), and then simply to quote, not without some diffidence, abon motof his in illustration of a figure of speech. The father was himself a rhetorician, and seems to have taught the subject both at Calagurris and also after the family removed to Rome: whether he is identical with the Quintilianus mentioned as a declaimer of moderate reputation by the elder Seneca (Controv. x. praef. 2: cp. ib. 33, 19) cannot now be ascertained.
The date of Quintilian’s birth has been variously given asA.D.42,A.D.38, andA.D.35, the last being now most commonly adopted. It cannot be determined with certainty, though a few considerations may here be adduced to show why it seems necessary to discard any theory that would put it afterA.D.38. Dodwell, in his ‘Annales Quintilianei’ (see Burmann’s edition, vol. ii. p. 1117), arrived at the yearA.D.42, after a careful examination of all the passages on which he thought it allowable to base an inference. But Quintilian tells us himself that he was a young man (nobis adulescentibusvi. 1, 14) at the trial of Cossutianus Capito,which we know from Tacitus (Ann. xiii. 33) took place inA.D.57: a fact which is in itself enough to show that Dodwell is at least two years too late. Another indication is derived from the references which Quintilian makes to his teacher Domitius Afer, who is known to have died at a ripe old age inA.D.59: cp. xii. 11, 3vidi ego ... Domitium Afrum valde senem: v. 7, 7quem adulescentulus senem colui: x.1, 86quae ex Afro Domitio iuvenis excepi. Unfortunately we do not know the date of the trial of Volusenus Catulus referred to in x.1, 23: Quintilian was a boy at the time (nobis pueris). In the preface to Book VI he writes like an old man: this appears especially in the reference he makes to the wife whom he had lost and who was only nineteen,—aetate tam puellari praesertim meae comparata§5. If we may infer that Quintilian was nearer sixty than fifty when he wrote these words, inA.D.93 or 94, we may be certain that he was born not later thanA.D.38, and probably two or three years earlier.
Quintilian received his early education at Rome, and his father’s position as a teacher of rhetoric, as well as the whole tendency of the education of the day, no doubt gave it a rhetorical turn from the very first. Even boys at school practised declamation, as may be seen from the following passage of theInstitutio:—
‘Non inutilem scio servatum esse a praeceptoribus meis morem, qui cum pueros in classes distribuerant, ordinem dicendi secundum vires ingenii dabant; et ita superiore loco quisque declamabat ut praecedere profectu videbatur. Huius rei iudicia praebebantur: ea nobis ingens palma, ducere vero classem multo pulcherrimum. Nec de hoc semel decretum erat: tricesimus dies reddebat victo certaminis potestatem. Ita nec superior successu curam remittebat, et dolor victum ad depellendam ignominiam concitabat. Id nobis acriores ad studia dicendi faces subdidisse quam exhortationem docentium, paedagogorum custodiam, vota parentium, quantum animi mei coniectura colligere possum, contenderim.’—i. 2, 23-25.
The same style of exercise was kept up at a later stage, when the boy passed into the hands of a professed teacher of rhetoric, such as the notorious Remmius Palaemon, who is said by the scholiast on Juvenal (vi. 451) to have been Quintilian’s master:—
‘Solebant praeceptores mei neque inutili et nobis etiam iucundo genere exercitationis praeparare nos coniecturalibus causis, cum quaerere atque exsequi iuberent “cur armata apud Lacedaemonios Venus” et “quid ita crederetur Cupido puer atque volucer et sagittis ac face armatus” et similia, in quibus scrutabamur voluntatem.’—ii. 4, 26.
He now came into contact with, and listened to the eloquence of, the most celebrated orators of the day. In his relations with the greatest ofthese, Domitius Afer, Quintilian seems to have acted on the maxim which he himself lays down for the budding advocate:oratorem sibi aliquem, quod apud maiores fieri solebat, deligat, quem sequatur, quem imiteturx.5, 19. To Afer he attached himself (adsectabar Domitium AfrumPlin. Ep. ii. 14, 10), and was in all probability by him initiated in the business of the law-courts and public life generally: cp. v. 7, 7adulescentulus senem colui(Domitium). In this passage Afer is said to have written two books on the examination of witnesses; and from vi. 3, 42 it would appear that his ‘dicta’ or witticisms were sufficiently distinguished to merit the honour of publication. He had held high office under Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, and his pre-eminence at the bar was undisputed: xii. 11, 3principem fuisse quondam fori non erat dubium. In his review of Latin oratory, Quintilian gives him high praise:arte et toto genere dicendi praeferendus, et quem in numero veterum habere non timeasx.1, 118. The pupil was fortunate therefore in his master, and he drew upon his reminiscences of Afer’s teaching when he himself came to instruct others (Plin. l.c.). Among other notable orators of the day were Servilius Nonianus (x.1, 102), Iulius Africanus (x.1, 118: xii. 10, 11), Iulius Secundus (x.1, 120:3, 12: xii. 10, 11), Galerius Trachalus (x.1, 119: xii. 10, 11), and Vibius Crispus (ibid.).
When he was about twenty-five years of age some motive induced Quintilian to return to Calagurris, his native town; and there he spent several years in the practice of his profession as teacher and barrister. We know that he came back to Rome with Galba inA.D.68: the evidence for this is again the statement made by Hieronymus in the Eusebian Chronicle,M. Fabius Quintilianus Romam a Galba perducitur. Galba had been governor of Hispania Tarraconensis under Nero (A.D.61-68), and it is not improbable that Quintilian, when he returned to his native country, was in some way attached to his official retinue; the numerousbons motswhich he records in the third chapter of the Sixth Book (§§62, 64, 66, 80, 90) seem to point to a certain amount of personal intercourse between himself and the future emperor3.
At Rome Quintilian must soon have proved himself thoroughly qualified for the work of teaching and training the young. The imperial countenance afterwards shown him by Vespasian was in all probability only an official expression of the esteem felt in the Roman community for one who was serving with such distinction in a sphere of which the importance was coming now to be more adequately recognised. Quintilian was not only a learned man and a great teacher: he was a greatmoral power in the midst of a people which had long been demoralised by the vices of its rulers. The fundamental principle of his teaching,non posse oratorem esse nisi virum bonum(i. pr. §9 and xii. 1), shows the high ideal he cherished and the wide view he took of the opportunities of his position. He felt himself strong enough to make a protest against the literary influence of Seneca, then the popular favourite, and to endeavour to recall a vitiated taste to more rigorous standards:corruptum et omnibus vitiis fractum dicendi genus revocare ad severiora iudicia contendo(x.1, 125). And when, in the evening of his days, he wrote his great treatise on the ‘technical training’ of the orator, it was from himself and his own successful practice that he drew many of his most cogent illustrations, e.g. vi. 2, 36, and (in regard to his powers of memory) xi. 2, 39 and iv. 2, 86.
In the earlier years of his career at Rome, before he became absorbed in the work of teaching, Quintilian must have had a considerable amount of practice at the bar. He tells us himself of a speech which he published,ductus iuvenali cupiditate gloriaeviii. 2, 24. It was of a common type. A certain Naevius Arpinianus was accused of having killed his wife, who had fallen from a window; and we may infer with certainty from the tone of Quintilian’s reference to the circumstances of the case that he succeeded in securing the acquittal of Naevius—more fortunate than the wife-killer of whom we read in Tacitus (Ann. iv. 22). A more distinguished cause was that of Berenice, the Jewish Queen before whom St. Paul appeared (Acts xxv. 13), and whose subsequent visit to Rome was connected with the ascendency she had established over the heart of the youthful Titus (Tac. Hist. ii. 2: Suet. Tit. 7). We can only speculate on the nature of the issue involved, as Quintilian confines himself to a bare statement of fact—ego pro regina Berenice apud ipsam causam dixiiv. 1, 19. It was in all probability a civil suit brought or defended by Berenice against some Jewish countryman; and the phenomenon of the queen herself presiding over a trial in which she was an interested party is accounted for by the hypothesis that, at least in civil suits, Roman tolerance allowed the Jews to settle their own disputes according to their national law. On such occasions the person of highest rank in the community to which the disputants belonged might naturally be designated to preside over the tribunal4.
In another case, Quintilian seems to have shown some of the dexterity attributed to him in the oft-quoted line of Juvenal (vi. 280)Dic aliquem, sodes, dic, Quintiliane, colorem. He was counsel for a woman who had been party to an arrangement by which the provisions of the Voconian law (passedB.C.169 to prevent the accumulation of property in the hands of females) had been evaded by the not uncommon method of a fraudulent disposition to a third person5. Quintilian’s client was accused of having produced a forged will. This charge it was easy to rebut, though it rendered necessary the explanation that the heirs named in the will had really undertaken to hand the property over to the woman; and if this explanation were openly given it would involve the loss of the estate. There is an evident tone of satisfaction in Quintiiian’s description of what happened:ita ergo fuit nobis agendum ut iudices illud intellegerent factum, delatores non possent adprehendere ut dictum, et contigit utrumque(ix. 2, 74).
Unlike his great model Cicero, who was considered most effective in theperoratioof a great case, where the work was divided among several pleaders, Quintilian was generally relied on to state a case (ponere causam) in its main lines for subsequent elaboration:me certe, quantacunque nostris experimentis habenda est fides, fecisse hoc in foro, quotiens ita desiderabat utilitas, probantibus et eruditis et iis qui iudicabant, scio: et (quod non adroganter dixerim, quia sunt plurimi quibuscum egi qui me refellere possint si mentiar) fere a me ponendae causae officium exigebaturiv. 2, 86. His methodical habit of mind would render him specially effective for this department of work. Other orators may have been more brilliant, more full of fire, and more able to work upon the feelings of an audience: if Quintilian had not the ‘grand style’—if he represents the type of an orator that is ‘made’ rather than ‘born’—we may at least believe that he was unsurpassed for judicious, moderate, and effective statement. His model in this as in other matters was probably Domitius Afer, of whom Pliny says (Ep. ii. 14, 10)apud decemviros dicebat graviter et lente, hoc enim illi actionis genus erat. His character and training would secure him a place apart from the common herd. ‘Among the orators of the day, some ignorant and coarse, having left mean occupations, without any preliminary study, for the bar, where they made up in audacity for lack of talent, and in noisy conceit for a defective knowledgeof law—others trained in the practice of delation to every form of trickery and violence—Quintilian, honest, able, and moderate stood by himself6.’
It was after Quintilian had attained some distinction in the practice of his profession, probably in the year 72, that his activity became invested with an official and public character. We learn the facts from Suetonius’s Life of Vespasian (ch. 18):primus e fisco latinis graecisque rhetoribus annua centena constituit: and the Eusebian chronicle (see Roth’s Suetonius, p. 272),Quintilianus, ex Hispania Calagurritanus, qui primus Romae publicam(‘state-supported’)scholam[aperuit]et salarium e fisco accepit, claruit—the zenith of his fame being placed between the years 85 and 89A.D.Vespasian, in fact, created and endowed a professorial Chair of Rhetoric, and Quintilian was its first occupant. He thus became the official head of the foremost school of oratory at Rome, and the ‘supreme controller of its restless youth’:
Quintiliane, vagae moderator summe iuventae,Gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, togae.—Mart. ii. 90, 1-2.
Quintiliane, vagae moderator summe iuventae,
Gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, togae.—Mart. ii. 90, 1-2.
In this capacity he must have exercised the greatest possible influence on the rising youth of Rome. The younger Pliny was his pupil, and evidently retained a grateful memory of the instruction which he received from him: Ep. ii. 14, 9 and vi. 6, 3. The same is true, in all probability, of Pliny’s friend Tacitus, who has much in common with Quintilian: possibly also of Suetonius. If Juvenal was not actually his pupil,—he is believed to have practised declamation till well on in life,—we may infer from the complimentary references which occur in his Satires that he at least appreciated Quintilian’s work and recognised its healthy influence7.
After a public career at Rome, extending over a period of twenty years8, Quintilian definitely retired from both teaching and pleading atthe bar. He seems to have profited by the example of his model, Domitius Afer, who would have done better if he had retired earlier (xii. 11, 3): Quintilian thought it was well to go while he would still be missed,—et praecipiendi munus iam pridem deprecati sumus et in foro quoque dicendi, quid honestissimum finem putabamus desinere dum desideraremur, ii. 12, 12. The wealth which he had acquired by the practice of his profession (Juv. vii. 186-189) enabled him to go into retirement with a light heart. The first-fruits of his leisure was a treatise in which he sought to account for that decline in eloquence for which theInstitutio Oratoriawas afterwards to provide a remedy. It was entitledDe causis corruptae eloquentiae, and was long confounded with the Dialogue on Oratory, now ascribed to Tacitus: he refers to this work in vi. pr. §3: viii. 6, 76: possibly also in ii. 4, 42: v. 12, 23: vi. pr. §3: viii. 3, 58, and 6, 769. This treatise is no longer extant, and we have lost also the two booksArtis Rhetoricae, which were published under Quintilian’s name (1 pr. §7),neque editi a me neque in hoc comparati: namque alterum sermonem per biduum habitum pueri quibus id praestabatur exceperant, alterum pluribus sane diebus, quantum notando consequi potuerant, interceptum boni iuvenes sed nimium amantes mei temerario editionis honore vulgaverant10. In a recent edition of the ‘Minor Declamations’ (M. Fabii Quintiliani declamationes quae supersunt cxlv Lipsiae, 1884), Const. Ritter endeavours to show that this is the work referred to in the passage quoted above, from the preface to theInstitutio: cp. Die Quintilianischen Declamationen, Freiburg i.B., undTübingen, 1881, p. 246 sqq.11Meister’s view, however, is that, like the ‘Greater Declamations,’ which are generally admitted to have been composed at a later date, the ‘Minor Declamations’ also were written subsequently either by Quintilian himself or (more probably) by imitators who had caught his style and were glad to commend their compositions by the aid of his great name. Even in his busy professional days Quintilian had suffered from the zeal of pirate publishers: he tells us (vii. 2, 24) that several pleadings were in circulation under his name which he could by no means claim as entirely his own:nam ceterae, quae sub nomine meo feruntur, neglegentia excipientium in quaestum notariorum corruptae minimam partem mei habent.
While living in retirement, and engaged on the composition of his work, Quintilian received a fresh mark of Imperial favour, this time from Domitian. This prince had adopted two grand-nephews, whom he destined to succeed him on the throne,—the children of his niece Flavia Domitilla, and of Flavius Clemens, a cousin whom he associated with himself about this time in the duties of the consulship. They were rechristened Vespasian and Domitian (Suet. Dom. 15), and the care of their education was entrusted to Quintilian (A.D.93). He accepted it with fulsome expressions of gratitude and appreciation12; but did not exercise it for long13, as the children, with their parents, became the victims of the tyrant’s capriciousness shortly before his murder, and were ruined as rapidly as they had risen. Flavius Clemens was put to death, and his wife Domitilla, probably accompanied by her two sons, was sent into exile. They seem to have embraced the Jewish faith; and it is interesting to speculate on the possibility that through intercourse with them, and with their children, Quintilian may have come into contact with a religion which was the forerunner of that which was destined soon afterwards to achieve so universal a triumph.
It was while he was acting as tutor to the two princes that Quintilian received, through the influence of their father Flavius Clemens, the compliment of the consular insignia. This we learn from Ausonius, himself the recipient of a similar favour from his pupil Gratian:Quintilianus per Clementem ornamenta consularia sortitus, honestamenta nominis potius videtur quam insignia potestatis habuisse. It was probably in allusion tothis promotion, unexampled at that time in the case of a teacher of rhetoric, that Juvenal wrote (vii. 197-8)—
Si Fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul;Si volet haec eadem, fies de consule rhetor:
Si Fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul;
Si volet haec eadem, fies de consule rhetor:
while another parallel is chronicled by Pliny, Ep. iv. 11, 1praetorius hic modo ... nunc eo decidit ut exsul de senatore, rhetor de oratore fieret. Itaque ipse in praefatione dixit dolenter el graviter: ‘quos tibi Fortuna, ludos facis?’ facis enim ex professoribus senatores, ex senatoribus professores.
The flattery with which Quintilian loads the emperor for these and similar favours is the only stain on a character otherwise invariably manly, honourable, and straightforward. It is startling for us to hear that monster of iniquity, the last of the Flavian line, invoked as an ‘upright guardian of morals’ (sanctissimus censoriv. pr. §3), even when he was ‘tearing in pieces the almost lifeless world.’ There may have been a grain of sincerity in the compliments which Quintilian, like Pliny, pays to his literary ability. Domitian’s poetical productions are said not to have been altogether wanting in merit; and his attachment to literary pursuits is shown by the festivals he instituted in honour of Minerva and Jupiter Capitolinus, in which rhetorical, musical, and artistic contests were a prominent feature (see on x.1, 91). But this is no justification for the fulsome language employed by Quintilian in the introduction to the Fourth Book, where the emperor is spoken of as the protecting deity of literary men:ut in omnibus ita in eloquentia eminentissimum ... quo neque praesentius aliud nec studiis magis propitium numen est; nor for his profession of belief that nothing but the cares of government prevented Domitian from becoming the greatest poet of Rome:Germanicum Augustum ab institutis studiis deflexit cura terrarum, parumque dis visum est esse eum maximum poetarumx.1, 91sq. Few would recognise Domitian in the following reference:laudandum in quibusdam quod geniti immortales, quibusdam quod immortalitatem virtute sint consecuti: quod pietas principis nostri praesentium quoque temporum decus fecitiii. 7, 9. Such servility can only be partially explained by Quintilian’s official relations to the Court and by the circumstances of the time at which he wrote. It was a vice of the age: Quintilian shares it with Martial, Statius, Silius Italicus, and Valerius Flaccus. The indignant silence which Tacitus and Juvenal maintained during the horrors of this reign is a better expression of the virtue of old Rome, which seems to have burned with steadier flame in the hearts of her genuine sons than in those of the ‘new men’from the provinces, with neither pride of family nor pride of nationality to save them from the corrupting influences of their surroundings14.
That Quintilian acquired considerable wealth, partly as a teacher and partly by work at the bar, is evident from the pointed references made by Juvenal in the seventh Satire. After showing how insignificant are the fees paid by Roman parents for their children’s education, when compared with their other expenses, the satirist suddenly breaks off,—unde igitur tot Quintilianus habet saltus?How does it come about (if his profession is so unremunerative) that Quintilian owns so many estates? The only answer which Juvenal can give to this conundrum is that the great teacher was one of the fortunate: ‘he is a lucky man, and your lucky man, like Horace’s Stoic, unites every good quality in himself, and can expect everything15.’ We must remember however, that, while Quintilian acquired wealth in the practice of his profession, no charge is made against him as having placed his abilities at the disposal of an unscrupulous ruler for his own advancement. Under Nero, Marcellus Eprius assisted in procuring the condemnation of Thrasea, and received over £42,000 for the service (Tac. Ann. xvi. 33): if Quintilian’s name had ever been associated with such a trial, Juvenal would have been more direct in his reference. But with Quintilian, as with so many others, the advantages of position and fortune were counterbalanced by grave domestic losses. In a less rhetorical age the memorable introduction to the Sixth Book of theInstitutiowould perhaps have taken a rather more simple form; but it is none the less a testimony to the warm human heart of the writer, now a childless widower. He had married, when already well on in life, a young girl whose death at the early age of nineteen made him feel as if in her he had lost a daughter rather than a wife:cum omni virtute quae in feminas cadit functa insanabilem attulit marito dolorem, tum aetate tam puellari, praesertim meae comparata, potest et ipsa numerari inter vulnera orbitatisvi. pr. 5. She left him two sons, the younger of whom did not long survive her; he had just completed his fifth year when he died. The father now concentrated all his affectionon the elder, and it was with his education in view that he made all haste to complete his great work, which he considered would be the best inheritance he could leave to him,—hanc optimum partem relicturus hereditatis videbar, ut si me, quod aequum et optabile fuit, fata intercepissent, praeceptore tamen patre utereturib. §1. But the blow again descended, and his house was desolate:at me fortuna id agentem diebus ac noctibus festinantemque metu meae mortalitatis ita subito prostravit ut laboris mei fructus ad neminem minus quam ad me pertineret. Illum enim, de quo summa conceperam et in quo spem unicam senectutis reponebam, repetito vulnere orbitatis amisiib. §2.
This would be about the year 94A.D., and theInstitutio Oratoriais said to have seen the light in 95. After that we hear no more of Quintilian. Domitian was assassinated in 96, and under the newrégimeit is possible that the favourite of the Flavian emperors may have been under a cloud. But his work was done; even if he lived on for a few years longer in retirement, his career had virtually closed with the publication of his great treatise. It used to be believed that he lived into the reign of Hadrian, and died about 118A.D., but this idea is founded on a misconception16. Probably he did not even see the accession of Nerva in 96: if he did, he must have died soon afterwards, for there are two letters of Pliny’s (one written between 97 and 100, and the other about 105) in which Pliny does not speak of his old teacher as of one still alive.
Though Quintilian spent little more than two years on the composition of theInstitutio Oratorio, his work really embodies the experience of alifetime. No doubt much of it lay ready to his hand, even before he began to write, and he would willingly have kept it longer; but the solicitations of Trypho, the publisher, were too much for him. His letter to Trypho shows that he fully appreciated the magnitude of his task; and there is even the suggestion that (like many a busy teacher since his time) he only realised when called upon to publish that he had not covered the whole ground of his subject17. The opening words of the introduction (post impetratam studiis meis quietem, quae per viginti annos erudiendis iuvenibus impenderam, &c.) show that theInstitutiowas the work of his retirement: and various indications lead us to fix the date of its composition as falling betweenA.D.93 and 95. The introduction to the Fourth Book was evidently written when (probably in 93) Domitian had appointed Quintilian tutor to his grand-nephews; the Sixth Book, where he refers to his family losses, must have followed shortly afterwards; while the harshness of his references to the philosophers in the concluding portions of the work (cp. xi. 1, 30, xii. 3, 11, with 1, pr. 15, which may have been written, or at least revised, after the rest was finished) seems to suggest that their expulsion by Domitian (in 94) was already an accomplished fact18. The book is dedicated to Victorius Marcellus, to whom Statius also addresses the Fourth Book of hisSilvae, evidently as to a person of some consideration and an orator of repute (cp. Stat. Silv. iv. 4, 8, and 41 sq.). Marcellus had a son called Geta (Inst. Or. i. pr. 6: Stat. Silv. iv. 4, 71), and it was originally with a view to the education of this youth (erudiendo Getae tuo) that Quintilian associated the father’s name with his work. Geta is again referred to, along with Quintilian’s elder son, and also the grand-nephews of Domitian, in the introduction to the Fourth Book; but the opening words of the Sixth Book show that they are all gone, and the epilogue, at the conclusion of Book xii, is addressed to Marcellus on behoof of ‘studiosi iuvenes’ in general.
The plan of theInstitutio Oratoriocannot be better given than in its author’s own words (i. pr. 21 sq.):Liber primus ea quae sunt ante officium rhetoris continebit. Secundo prima apud rhetorem elementa et quae de ipsa rhetorices substantia quaeruntur tractabimus, quinque deinceps inventioni (nam huic et dispositio subiungitur) quattuor elocutioni, in cuius partem memoria ac pronuntiatio veniunt, dabuntur. Unus accedet in quo nobis orator ipse informandus est, et qui mores eius, quae insuscipiendis, discendis, agendis causis ratio, quod eloquentiae genus, quis agendi debeat esse finis, quae post finem studia, quantum nostra valebit infirmitas, disseremus.The first book deals with what the pupil must learn before he goes to the rhetorician; it gives an account of home-training and school discipline, and contains also a statement of Quintilian’s views of grammar. The second book treats of rhetoric in general: the choice of a proper instructor, as well as his character and function, and the nature, principles, aims, and use of oratory. It is in these early books especially that Quintilian reveals the high tone which has made him an authority on educational morals, as well as rhetorical training: see especially i. 2, 8, where he enlarges on Juvenal’s dictum,maxima debetur puero reverentia; ii. 4, 10, where he advocates gentle and conciliatory methods in teaching; and ii. 2, 5,—a picture of the ideal teacher in language which might be applied to Quintilian himself19. The remaining books, except the twelfth, are devoted to the five ‘parts of rhetoric,’—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery (Cic. de Inv. i. 7, 9). In the third book we have a classification of the different kinds of oratory. Next he treats of the ‘different divisions of a speech, the purpose of the exordium, the proper form of a statement of facts, what constitutes the force of proofs, either in confirming our own assertions or refuting those of our adversary, and of the different powers of the peroration, whether it be regarded as a summary of the arguments previously used, or as a means of exciting the feelings of the judge rather than of refreshing his memory.’This brings us to the end of the sixth book, which closes with remarks on the uses of humour and of altercation20. The discussion of arrangement finishes with the seventh book, which is extremely technical: style (elocutio) is the main subject of the four books which follow. Of these the eighth and ninth treat of the elements of a good style,—such as perspicuity, ornament, &c.; the tenth of the practical studies and exercises (including a course of reading) by which the actual command of these elements may be obtained; while the eleventh deals with appropriateness (i.e. the different kinds of oratory which suit different audiences), memory, and delivery. The twelfth book—which Quintilian calls the most grave and important part of the whole work—treats of the high moral qualifications requisite in the perfect orator:just as the first book, introductory to the whole, describes the early training which should precede the technical studies of the orator, so the last book sets forth that ‘discipline of the whole man’ which is their crown and conclusion21. “Lastly, the experienced teacher gives advice when the public life of an orator should begin, and when it should end. Even then his activity will not come to an end. He will write the history of his times, will explain the law to those who consult him, will write, like Quintilian himself, a treatise on eloquence, or set forth the highest principles of morality. The young men will throng round and consult him as an oracle, and he will guide them as a pilot. What can be more honourable to a man than to teach that of which he has a thorough knowledge? ‘I know not,’ he concludes, ‘whether an orator ought not to be thought happiest at that period of his life when, sequestered from the world, devoted to retired study, unmolested by envy, and remote from strife, he has placed his reputation in a harbour of safety, experiencing while yet alive that respect which is more commonly offered after death, and observing how his character will be regarded by posterity22.’”
TheInstitutio Oratoriadiffers from all other previous rhetorical treatises in the comprehensiveness of its aim and method. It is a complete manual for the training of the orator, from his cradle to the public platform. Founding on old Cato’s maxim, that the orator is thevir bonus dicendi peritus, Quintilian considers it necessary to take him at birth in order to secure the best results, as regards both goodness of character and skill in speaking. His work has therefore for us a double value and a twofold interest: it is a treatise on education in general, and on rhetorical education in particular. Throughout the whole, oratory is the end for the sake of which everything is undertaken,—the goal to which the entire moral and intellectual training of the student is to be directed. Quintilian’s high conception of his subject is reflected in the language of the ‘Dialogue on Oratory’:Studium quo non aliud in civitate nostra vel ad utilitatem fructuosius vel ad voluptatem dulcius vel ad dignitatem amplius vel ad urbis famam pulchrius vel ad totius imperii atque omnium gentium notitiam inlustrius excogitari potest(ch. 5). Though the field for the practical display of eloquence had been greatly limited bythe extinction of the old freedom of political life, rhetoric represented, in Quintilian’s day, the whole of education. It was to the Romans whatμουσικήwas to the Greeks, and was valued all the more by them because of its eminently practical purpose. The student of rhetoric must therefore be fully equipped. “Quintilian postulates the widest culture: there is no 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 fashion of the day, which hurried over preliminary cultivation, and allowed men to grow grey while declaiming in the schools, where nature and reality were forgotten. Yet he develops all the technicalities of rhetoric with a fulness to which we find no parallel in ancient literature. Even in this portion of the work the illustrations are so apposite and the style so dignified and yet sweet, that the modern reader, whose initial interest in rhetoric is of necessity faint, is carried along with much less fatigue than is necessary to master most parts of the rhetorical writings of Aristotle and Cicero. At all times the student feels that he is in the company of a high-toned Roman gentleman who, so far as he could do without ceasing to be a Roman, has taken up into his nature the best results of ancient culture in all its forms23.”
It is in connection with the general rather than with the technical training of his pupils that Quintilian establishes a claim to rank with the highest educational authorities,—as for example in his insistence on the necessity of good example both at home24and in school, and on the respect due to the young25, as well as his catalogue of the qualifications required in the trainer of youth (ii. 2, 5: 4, 10), his protest against corporal punishment (i. 3, 14), and his consistent advocacy of the moral as well as the intellectual aspects of education. His system was conceived as a remedy for the existing state of things at Rome, where eloquence and the arts in general had, as Messalla puts it in the ‘Dialogue on Oratory,’ “declined from their ancient glory, not from the dearth of men, but from the indolence of the young, the carelessness of parents, the ignorance of teachers, and neglect of the old discipline26.” Under it parents and teachers were to be united in the effort to develop the moral and intellectual qualities of the Roman youth: and through education the state was to recover something of her old vigour and virtue.
The work was expected with the greatest interest before its publication, and we may infer, from the high authority assigned to Quintilian in theliterature of the period, that it long held an honoured place in Roman schools. But it is curious that the earliest known references are not to theInstitutiobut to theDeclamationes. In an interesting chapter of the Introduction to a recent volume27, M. Fierville has gathered together all the references that occur in the literature of the early centuries of our era. Trebellius Pollio and Lactantius (both of the 3rd century) speak of the Declamations, and Ausonius (4th century) refers to Quintilian without naming his writings: the first definite mention of theInstitutiois made by Hilary of Poitiers (died 367) and afterwards by St. Jerome (died 420). Later Cassiodorus (468-562) pronounced a eulogy which may stand as proof of his high appreciation:Quintilianus tamen doctor egregius, qui post fluvios Tullianos singulariter valuit implere quae docuit, virum bonum dicendi peritum a prima aetate suscipiens, per cunctas artes ac disciplinas nobilium litterarum erudiendum esse monstravit, quem merito ad defendendum totius civitatis vota requirerent(de Arte Rhetor.—Rhet. Lat. Min., ed. Halm, p. 498). The Ars Rhetorica of Julius Victor (6th century) is largely borrowed from Quintilian: see Halm, praef. p. ix. Isidore, Bishop of Seville (570-630), studied Quintilian in conjunction with Aristotle and Cicero. After the Dark Age, Poggio’s discovery, at St. Gall in 1416, of a complete manuscript of Quintilian was ranked as one of the most important literary events in what we know now as the era of the Renaissance28. The great scholars of the fifteenth century worked hard at the emendation of the text. Theeditio princepswas given to the world by G. A. Campani in 1470; and in the concluding words of his preface the editor reflects something of the enthusiasm for his author which had already been expressed by Petrarch, Poggio, and others,—proinde de Quintiliano sic habe, post unam beatissimam et unicam felicitatem M. Tullii, quae fastigii loco suspicienda est omnibus et tamquam adoranda, hunc unum esse quem praecipuum habere possis in eloquentia ducem: quem si assequeris, quidquid tibi deerit ad cumulum consummationis id a natura desiderabis non ab arte deposces. This edition was followed in rapid succession by various others, so that by the end of the 16th century Quintilian had been edited a hundred times over29. The 17th century is not so rich in editions, but Quintilian still reigned in the schools as the great master of rhetoric: students of English literaturewill remember how Milton (Sonnet xi) uses the authority of his name when referring to the roughness of northern nomenclature:—