Institutio Oratoria

Institutio Oratoria (English: Institutes of Oratory) is a twelve-volume textbook on the theory and practice of rhetoric by Roman rhetorician Quintilian. It was published around year 95 AD. The work deals also with the foundational education and development of the orator himself.

Quintilian wrote his book during the last years of the reign of Emperor Domitian. In the tradition of several Roman emperors, such as Nero and Caligula, Domitian's regime grew harsher as time went on. “[An] active secret police preyed on the Roman population, and even senators were encouraged in various ways to inform on each other ... under Domitian, even the slightest suspicion of disrespect for the emperor became a capital crime” (xx). Social and political corruption were rife. In a move of utmost irony, the debauched Domitian appointed himself “censor perpetuus, making himself responsible for public morals” (xx).

Against this backdrop, it was very difficult to find orators in the tradition of Cicero, part of whose "fame as an orator stems from his public denunciations of enemies of the state" (XIX). Such positions were simply too dangerous to take during the reign of the emperors since Augustus. Therefore, the role of the orator had changed since Cicero's day. Now, they were more concerned with pleading cases than anything else. Into this time, Quintilian attempted to interject some of the idealism of an earlier time. “Political oratory was dead, and everyone in Rome knew it was dead; but Quintilian deliberately chooses the oratory of a past generation as his educational ideal” (Gwynn, 188).

For hundreds of years during the Middle Ages, European scholars only knew about the Institutio from quotations in other works and little fragments that they recovered. However, a complete copy was found in 1416 in the Monastery of St. Gall (St. Gallen), Switzerland:

In September, 1416, the Italian humanist and book-hunter Poggio Bracciolini visited a Benedictine monastery in St. Gall, Switzerland. There he found—not in a library but in a dungeon which he declared was not fit for a condemned man—the first complete copy of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (Orator’s Education, 95 CE) that any scholar had seen for nearly six centuries. Suddenly aware that it was a valuable book, the German monks refused to let Poggio take it away, so he was forced to sit down and copy it by hand over the next 54 days. The reaction to the discovery among humanists, especially in Italy, was swift and fervent. Leonardo Aretino wrote, “I entreat you, my dear Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die”

— James J. Murphy, "A Quintilian Anniversary and Its Meaning", Advances in the History of Rhetoric Volume 19, 2016 - Issue 2: An Ancient Master Teacher Speaks to the Modern World: What Quintilian Can Tell Us About Modern Pedagogy (June 2016)

In the first two books, Quintilian focuses on the early education of the would-be orator, including various subjects he should be skilled in, such as reading and composition. “He offers us indeed not so much a theory as a curriculum. For instance in ch. iv of Book I he discusses certain letters, the derivation of words, and parts of speech; in ch. v, the necessity of correctness in speaking and writing, choice of words, barbarisms, aspiration, accent, solecisms, figures of speech, foreign words, and compound words; in ch. vi, analogy, and in ch. viii, orthography” (Laing). Regarding the age at which the orator's training should begin, Quintilian refers to the views of Hesiod and Eratosthenes, but accepts Chrysippus’ view that a child’s life should never be without education (Quintilian 1.1.15-19).

Quintilian sees these formative years as the most critical to the education of an orator: “The infancy of the mind is as important as the infancy of the body and needs as much attention” (Quintilian 1.1.1-24). The role of the orator's nurse is greatly emphasized as “it is she that the boy will hear first, [and] it is her words that he will imitate” (Laing, 519). Parents play an equally important role, their education being a determining factor in the orator's progress. Thirdly, the paedagogus, (the slave who attends the young orator) “must be well educated and ready at all times to correct errors in grammar” (Laing, 520). Finally, Quintilian stresses that the orator should be educated by “the most accomplished teacher” (1.1.22). This ideal teacher is described in detail in (2.2.5).