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Greeks and Romans in Book 12 of Quintilian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Thomas N. Habinek
Thomas N. Habinek*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

It is a common observation that Latin literature of the imperial period is highly rhetorical. Usually this claim is made with reference to the elaborate and overwrought nature of the language (a function of elocutio) or to the recurrence of certain conventional themes, images, and topoi (a subdivision of inventio). But to the Romans, rhetoric was something larger and deeper. It involved an approach to any situation, not just the composition of literature, that paid attention to the needs and biases of one's interlocutor, the constraints of tradition and form, and, of course, the aims and purposes of the speaker. ‘The art of rhetoric would be an easy and paltry affair if it could be contained in one brief set of rules,’ writes Quintilian. ‘But with cases and circumstances, opportunity and necessity, all is changed about; and so the crucial qualification for an orator is judgement (consilium), because he directs himself in various ways, and in accordance with the circumstances of the situation (ad rerum momenta)’ (I.O. 2.13.2). This rhetorical, or situation-oriented approach to literature and to life was seen by the Romans as distinguishing themselves from the Greeks, who had their own obsessions with esoteric truths and hair-splitting sophistry. Alongside the satirist's contrast between the Graeculus esuriens (‘hungry Greekling’) and the upright Roman, there is an equally common, if less frequently observed contrast between the quick-witted Greek, good at dialectic and analysis, and the sensible Roman, concerned with the moral and practical dimensions of any situation. When Fannius and Scaevola ask Laelius at the outset of the Ciceronian dialogue named after him, if he can please discourse on friendship, he replies that he is no Greek, capable of debating pro and contra on the spur of the moment, but a Roman who can and will give them sound and efficacious exhortation on the significance of loyalty in human affairs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 16 , Issue 1-2 , 1987 , pp. 192 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1987 

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References

1. Laelius 7. Cf. Rep. 1.35f., 2.21f.

2. The standard edition of Quintilian is M. Winterbottom’s Oxford Classical Text (2 vols., 1970), quoted throughout this paper. There is a useful commentary on book 12 by R. G. Austin (Oxford 1948). The translation of J. S. Watson (2 vols. London 1856) is stodgy, but generally more accurate than H. E. Butler’s Loeb edition (4 vols., London and Cambridge, Mass., 1920–22). An excellent overview of Quintilian’s life and work is to be found in Kennedy, G. A., Quintilian (New York 1969 Google Scholar), although I disagree with points of emphasis in his treatment of book 12. Also useful, and even more sympathetic, is Kennedy, ’s discussion of Quintilian in The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton 1972) 487ffGoogle Scholar. Important articles on book 12 include Winterbottom, M., ‘Quintilian and the Vir Bonus ’, JRS 54 (1964) 90–97Google Scholar, and Classen, C. J., ‘Der Aufbau des zwolften Buches der Institutio oratoria Quintilians’, MH 22 (1965) 181–190Google Scholar. Winterbottom documents the vast difference between Quintilian’s educational ideal and the practice of the spectacularly successful informers (delatores) of the first century A.D., but passes over the countless ‘unknowns’ who must have done the routine work of pleading in the lawcourts and tribunals throughout the Empire. Classen defends the unity of book 12 against the criticism of ‘analysts’ but, as I will argue, does not go far enough in asserting the coherence of Quintilian’s achievement. Brinton, A., ‘Quintilian, Plato, and the Vir Bonus ’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 16 (1983) 167–184Google Scholar analyses the first chapter of book 12 in terms of Platonic idealism: he stresses the abstract nature of Quintilian’s exemplar, but Mis to recognise the hortatory power of such an exemplar in ancient theory and practice. Meador, P. A., ‘Quintilian’s “Vir Bonus”’, Western Speech 34 (1970) 162–169CrossRefGoogle Scholar rightly notes the Roman nature of Quintilian’s ideal without considering the charge of anachronism. Brief, and on balance unfavourable, accounts of Quintilian’s goals are to be found in Clarke, M. L., Education at Rome (London 1953, 1965), 109–119Google Scholar and Goodyear, F. R. D., ‘Quintilian’, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II. Latin Literature, ed. Kenney, E. J. and Clausen, W. V. (Cambridge, UK 1982) 674–676CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Kennedy 1969 (above, n.2) 138.

4. Winterbottom (above, n.2) 97. Cf. Clarke (above, n.2) 118, who makes the remarkable claim that ‘Quintilian is singularly unconscious of the changes that have taken place in the world since the days of Cicero.’

5. The most notorious is that of Bonnet, M. in ‘Encore quelques passages de Quintilien’, R Ph ser. ii.17 (1893) 116–119Google Scholar. The whole controversy is reviewed by Classen (above, n.2), with appropriate bibliography.

6. Haste is the last defence of Quintilian’s sympathisers, e.g. Austin (above, n.2) xxx–xxxi.

7. On the distinction between ‘demonstration’, which seeks truth, and ‘argumentation’, which seeks conviction, see Perelman, Ch., The New Rhetoric: A Treatise in Argumentation, tr. Wilkinson, J. and Weaver, P. (Notre Dame 1969 Google Scholar), originally published as La nouvelle rhitorique (Paris 1958 Google Scholar). For a provocative account of the difference between a ‘rhetorical’ and a ‘serious’ approach to literature and to life, see Lanham, R., The Motives of Eloquence (New Haven and London 1976 Google Scholar). Lanham’s contrast would have seemed an odd choice of words to the Romans, since to them it was the anti-rhetorical mode that was un-serious; but he is certainly right when he states that most criticism of rhetoric (and I include here most criticism of Quintilian book 12) ‘points to differences [in outlook] so fundamental they indicate wholly different ways of looking at the world’ (5).

8. For a concise account of some of the components of a rhetorical interpretation, see Bitzer, Lloyd F., “The Rhetorical Situation’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968) 1–14Google Scholar. Bitzer’s notion of ‘situation’ is far more restricted (and hence more useful) than the classicist’s vague concept of ‘historical context’. For a thoughtful restatement of some of Bitzer’s views as well as a fascinating exemplum of rhetorical criticism, see Kennedy, G. A., New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill and London 1984 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

9. For a sensible discussion of Quintilian’s diverse audience see Fantham, E., ‘Quintilian on Performance’, Phoenix 36 (1982) 244f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, following Kennedy 1969 (above, n.2).

10. 1.pr.22 specifically refers to the final book, 9.4.146 to the book de oratore. 2.14.5 refers to matters to be taken up suo loco, which are, in fact, treated in the extant twelfth book. The final sentence of book 11, to the effect that we must take care in seeking to achieve the elegance of an actor not to squander the prestige of a good and grave man (ne perdamus … viri boni et gravis auctoritatem, 11.3.184) can be read as an anticipatory transition to book 12 which identifies the summits orator as a vir bonus. For further anticipatory references to the content of book 12, see 2.21.24, 3.8.42.

11. See 2.14.5, also Classen (above, n.2).

12. Whether the twelfth book was actually composed last (which seems likely) or not, is irrelevant to our argument. What matters is that it is so placed as to be read last.

13. Quintilian is referring specifically to the section of De oratore 3 in which Crassus, having begun to discuss the vents orator (3.53), also called the summits orator (3.84), drops the subject (3.90) referring to it as a digression (3.90) and continues to talk about oratory, not the orator. There is no misunderstanding or implied criticism of the Ciceronian ideal.

14. On exemplar vs. exemplum, see Trimpi, W., “The Ancient Hypothesis of Fiction’, Traditio 27 (1971) 1–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 69, as well as the revised and expanded discussion in his Muses of One Mind: The Literary Analysis of Experience and its Continuity (Princeton 1983 Google Scholar). Cf. Paul, ex Fest. 82: Exemplum est quod sequamur out vitemus, exemplar ex quo simile faciamus (‘An exemplum is what we either pursue or avoid, an exemplar that from which we fashion something similar’). I am not sure that the terminological distinction posited in our text is observed consistently, but the conceptual distinction seems worth making.

15. E.g., Ep. 33.8, 66.4; Marc. 1.1, Vita Beata 19.3. On the Stoic sage as exemplar, see Cons. 7.1.

16. See Cic. Leg. Man. (on precedents), Cic. Clu. 139 (on authority vs. deductive reasoning), Cic. Off. 1.40, and Bell. Afr. 54.3 (on the establishment of an exemplum).

17. 1.O. 12.1.18. Quintilian also draws the analogy between his strategy of presenting the exemplary orator and the Stoic reference to the model behaviour of the sapiens at l.pr.18–20: ‘Let the orator, therefore, be such a man as may be called truly wise, not blameless in morals only … but accomplished in knowledge, and in every qualification for speaking; a character such as, perhaps, no man ever was. But we are not the less for that reason, to aim at perfection, for which most of the ancients strove. Although they thought that no sapiens had ever been found, nevertheless thay laid down directions for gaining wisdom.’ (tr. Watson).

18. Bonnet (above, n.5) 117.

19. Ars rhet. 1.2.8 (1356a–b). Cf. Quint. 5.10.95–99, and 5.11. The latter chapter of Quintilian specifically cites Cicero’s discussion of inductio in De Inventione 1.49ff.

20. This is obviously a highly abbreviated account of an elaborate and evolving theory. For further assistance, see the primary sources cited in the preceding note; also Trimpi 1970 and 1983 (above, n.14); the article ‘Exemplum’ in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 6 (1966) 1229ff.Google Scholar, and Lausberg, H., Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (Munich 1960) vol. 1Google Scholar, sections 410–426.

21. Odyssey 3.26–28, where a contrast is established between noeō and hupotithēmi, not unlike the Ciceronian distinction between ratiocinatio and inductio (Inv. 1.51, cf. Lausberg [above, n.20] 1.419). I am debted to Mr. Hayden Ausland for the Homer reference and for several helpful discussions of education by exemplum in the ancient world.

22. The theory is most fully developed in the Ad Demonicum and Ad Nicoclem. I find the defence of the authenticity of these works in Hartlich, P., De exhortationum a Graecis Romanisque scriptorum historia et indole , Leipziger Studien zur klassischen Philologie 11 (1889) 207–336Google Scholar, persuasive, but the issue is at best tangential to the matter under consideration in this paper. On the function of exempla see also Antidosis 68–69 and 277ff.

23. There is an interesting discussion of Quintilian’s relationship to Seneca in Sel, O., Quintilian (Stuttgart 1977) 188–230Google Scholar. On Seneca’s 94th and 95th letters, see Dihle, A., ‘Posidonius’ System of Moral Philosophy’, JHS 93 (1973) 50–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in large part refuted by KiJd, I. G., ‘Moral Actions and Rules in Stoic Ernies’, in The Stoics, ed. Rist, J. M. (Berkeley 1978) 247–258Google Scholar, which is still not wholly satisfactory. Bellincioni, M., Educazione alia sapientia in Seneca (Brescia 1978 Google Scholar), is a highly informative but diffuse treatment of letters 94 and 95. See also Bellincioni, ’s commentary, Lettere a Lucilio, Libra XV: Le lettere 94 e 95. Testo introduzione, versione e commento (Brescia 1979 Google Scholar).

24. I.O. 12.1.26, 12.1.28.

25. Kennedy 1969 (above, n.2) 37, calls it ‘rather out of place’.

26. E.g. Clarke (see above, n.2).

27. Kennedy 1969 (above, n.2) 131–132, repeated in Kennedy 1972 (above, n.2) 512.

28. Classen (above, n.2).

29. On the relative dating of the Dialogus and the Institutio, see Güngerich, R., ‘Der Dialogus des Tacitus und Quintilians Institutio Oratoria,’ CP 46 (1951) 159–164Google Scholar; on the absolute dates Cousin, J., ‘Problèmes bibliographiques et litteraires relatifs a Quintilien’, REL 9 (1931) 71–74Google Scholar (A.D. 96 for the Institutio) and Murgia, C. E., “The Date of Tacitus’ Diahgus ’, HSCP 84 (1980) 99–125Google Scholar (A.D. 97 for the Diahgus). For the comparatio of the two see Kennedy 1969 (above, n.2) 136–139; Winterbottom (above, n.2); Clarke (above, n.2) 118f.; and Costa, C. D. N., “The Diahgus ’ in Tacitus, ed. Dorey, T. A. (London 1969) 19–34Google Scholar, who writes: ‘Quintilian was a professor of rhetoric with standards to safeguard; Tacitus was a literary artist of genius, employing the living language and stylistic idioms of his day’ (31). Quintilian comes out best in Kennedy’s second comparatio (above n.2, 1972), 487–514 and 522f., where he concludes that ‘in the upshot the truth was somewhere between Tacitus’ and Quintilian’s position… Tacitus’ criticism, like his politics, was embittered and distorted’ (523). But the real difference between Tacitus and Quintilian is to be found not in Tacitus’ nastiness, but in his willingness to let historical analysis have the final word.

30. Kennedy 1969 (above, n.2) 139.

31. Winterbottom (above, n.2) 94.

32. Winterbottom (above, n.2) 96.

33. Kennedy 1969 (above, n.2) 136.