Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, a podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, movements,
and people who shaped rhetorical history. I'm Mary Hedengren.
Quintilian was a transitional figure of rhetoric. Born in a Roman province of Spain to a Spanish
family at around 35 CE, he lived both geographically and temporally at the peripheries of the
Roman Empire. Quintilian was, as everyone was, influenced by Cicero and the Greek instructors,
Progymnasmata, which we've talked about in an earlier episode. He was deeply concerned with
questions about the education of rhetoric. As a teacher of rhetoric, his students were mostly
historians, like Tacitus, or authors, like Juvenal, instead of politicians. In fact, his student Tacitus
will later argue that there wasn't much space for rhetoric as the Roman Empire became more
authoritarian. Who's going to argue with an Emperor? But Quintilian was deeply interested in not
just creating better rhetoric, but better rhetors. The most famous idea from Quintilian is probably
his insistence that the rhetor will be a good person all around. Educated, kind, refined. As Bruce
Herzberg and Patricia Bizzell say in their introduction, "Quintilian's insistence on the moral
element may bespeak his own quiet desperation about what sort of leader would be needed to
galvanize the corrupt Rome of his day." Whatever Quintilian's motivation, he explains in detail,
hundreds of pages of detail, how rhetors are to be educated.
>> That's right, Mary. To illustrate Quintilian's preoccupation with the intersection of ethics and
the art of oratory, it's worth noting that his definition of rhetoric is "a good man speaking well.”
Without good words and good morals, there cannot be good rhetoric. There can be no divorce
between the content and the form of statement. The reverse was also important for Quintilian,
that training in rhetoric could have some sort of moral impact on the student. Quintilian hoped
that people would be more moral for their rhetorical training. Although he was teaching at a time
when rhetoric and Roman society was at "no longer a severe discipline for training the average
man for active citizenship." Good citizenship depends, not just on speaking technically well, but
also morally well. How does the student develop this kind of technical and moral excellence in
speaking? Primarily, through the impact of good examples. Nurses, classmates, and especially
the teacher should "all be kept free from moral fault" or "even the suspicion of it." Classmates
can have good effects on students. Instructors should also frequently demonstrate because now
that we teach, examples are more powerful even than the rules." This sort of reminds me of the
kind of scaffolding that Lev Vygotsky, Ridley, and Carroll talk about. When students are
surrounded by students doing work that is just a little bit more difficult than what
they're accustomed to, they can see how their near peers rise to the problems and learn how
to imitate those strategies as well.
>> So teachers, classmates, instructors, you can tell from all of these influences that Quintilian is
so worried about, he believes in the little sponges model of pedagogy. Some influences like
nurses and classmates maybe accidental, but Quintilian also emphasizes the conscious use of
imitation exercises to strengthen the student. In fact, Quintilian declares that "an orator ought to
be furnished, above all things, with an ample store of examples." The things that
Quintilian recommends imitation, though, vary from the standard Progymnasmata.
The Progymnasmata gave students topics like kidnappers and smugglers. Standard Hardy Boy
stuff. But Quintilian believed that students should imitate the sort of things they're actually going
to be writing. Real life writing. In this sense, you can see how Quintilian would be comfortable
with some of the scholars who emphasize learning to write in the disciplines. All of this is sort of
a social-constructed view of good rhetoric, even som