Ebook: Quintilian Institutio Oratoria: Book 2 (Bk. 2)

This volume is an edition, with a new Latin text and full commentary, of Book 2 of Quintilian's Education of the Orator. Education and the conceptualization of technical disciplines are now focal points of research into Graeco-Roman antiquity, and Quintilian's work is central to both areas. Following the treatment of elementary education in Book 1, Quintilian proceeds to the discussion of the second stage of instruction, provided by the teacher of rhetoric. He gives important insights into the way teaching was conducted in a rhetorical school in Rome in the first century AD, and discusses the various elementary rhetorical exercises one by one. The second half of the book is concerned with Quintilian's theoretical conception of rhetoric. Rhetoric is seen as an "art," a technical discipline grounded in rules and organized like medicine or seafaring, and--less obviously--as a virtue. The section as a whole provides an argument for Quintilian's celebrated claim that the perfect orator is "a good man, skilled in speaking."