878 LONDON: REPRINTED FROM STEREO-PLATES BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 14 Jy og Eac BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICE OP QUINTILIAN. MARCUS FABIUS QUINTILIANUS was born at Calagurris, now called Calahorra, a town of Spain on the Ebro.* The time of his birth is uncertain, but as he was, while still young, a hearer of Domitius Afer at Rome, who died A. D. 59,† we may reasonably suppose him to have been born about A.D. 40. What his father was, is unknown. He alludes to him once, in the ninth book, where Spalding suggests that he may have been the pleader mentioned by Seneca the rhetorician in the preface to the fifth book of his Controversies; but for this supposition there is no foundation. The scholiast on Juvenal § says that he studied under the grammarian Palæmon. He appears to have returned to Spain, and to have been brought again from thence by the emperor Galba, A.D. 68, to Rome, where he distinguished himself in the two professions of pleader, and teacher of eloquence. Among his pupils was Pliny the younger. || His scholars seem to have been numerous, according to Martial,¶ Quintiliane, vaga moderator summe juventæ, the first of which verses, says Gesner, refers to his teaching, and the second to his pleading. It would appear from St. Jerome's Chronicon** that he first opened a public school or college for rhetoric at Rome in the eighth year of the reign * Hieron. in Chron. ad Ol. 211 and 216. + Inst. Or. v. 7, 7; x. 1, 11, 24, 36; xii. 11, 3. Tacit. Ann. xiv. 19. C. 3, sect. 73. Plin. Ep. ii. 14 ; vi. 6. § VI. 452. T XI. 90. ** Ubi suprà.. 192634 of Domitian, receiving a salary from the public treasury. The salaries for Greek and Latin rhetoricians had previously been fixed by Vespasian at a hundred thousand sesterces, or about eight hundred pounds of our money. He himself speaks of his oratorical efforts, and of the memory which he exhibited in them.t * He published, however, only one of his orations, which was delivered on behalf of a certain Nævius Apronianus,‡ whe was accused of having killed his wife. Other speeches of his were in circulation, but they had been made public without his sanction, by short-hand writers who had taken them down to make profit of them. He complains of the negligence and incorrectness with which they had been given to the world.§ He pleaded, on some occasion, before queen Berenice, and on her behalf, but the subject of the pleading is not known. After spending twenty years ¶ in the forum and in his school, he seems to have retired, partially or wholly, from public employment, and to have devoted his leisure, at the request of his friends, to the composition of his Institutiones Oratoria, a work which he was the rather induced to undertake by the circumstance that two books on rhetoric had been published in his name by some of his pupils, who had taken notes of his lectures, and had sent them into the world with more zeal than discretion.** He dedicated the work to Marcellus Victorius, the same to whom Statius inscribes the fourth book of his Silvæ. About the time that he was finishing the third book, he was intrusted with the education of two grandnephews of Domitian, the sons of Flavius Clemens, and Domitilla, the grand-daughter of Vespasian.†† As he was about to commence his sixth book, he was afflicted with the loss of his son, aged ten years, of whom he had formed high expectations, and who had been adopted by some person of consular dignity. He had previously lost another son at the age of five, and his wife, whose amiable qualities he highly extols, at the age of nineteen. He represents himself as almost in despair, and weary of life; but he resolved on seeking consolation from literature, and proceeded with his work.‡‡ One of Pliny's Letters, the thirty-second of the sixth book, * Suet. Vespas. c. 17. § VII. 2, 24. ** I. 1, 7. † XI. 2, 39. ++ B. iv. introd. + VII. 2, 24. ¶ I. 1, 1. B. vi. intred. is addressed to a person named Quintilian, who had a daughter, to whom Pliny offers to present fifty thousand sesterces, or about four hundred pounds, on her marriage. This Quintilian is generally supposed to be the author of the Institutes, and, if so, the daughter, as Quintilian does not mention her in speaking of his first wife and family, was probably the offspring of a second marriage, to the daughter, as Pliny intimates, of a certain Tutilius. Dodwell thinks that this second marriage took place about A.D. 94, when Quintilian was past fifty. Quintilian was invested by Domitian with the name and insignia of consul, at the request, according to Ausonius,* of Clemens, doubtless the Flavius Clemens to whose children he had been appointed preceptor; but "the honour," adds Ausonius, was rather a titular distinction than an indication of authority." It is to this exaltation that Juvenal alludes, in the verse, It appears, 66 Si Fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul,+ from the same passage of Juvenal, that Quintilian, though parents were unwilling to pay liberally for the education of their sons, was a rich man, Unde igitur tot Quintilianus habet saltus? Whence has Quintilian gain'd Such large estates? and the satirist attributes his wealth to the favour of fortune. When he died, is uncertain. Dodwell supposes that he was alive A.D. 118, when he was probably seventy-five years old. His character, as a man, appears to have stood fair in the estimation of his contemporaries. The tendency of what Juvenal says of him, is to make us look upon him in a favourable light. Gesner supposes that in the verses Felix et pulcher et acer, Felix et sapiens et nobilis et generosus, every epithet is to be literally applied to Quintilian; that the word pulcher proves him to have been of a handsome person; and that the words in the sixth satire, In Gratiarum Actione. Juv. Sat. vii. 186. An expectas ut Quintilianus ametur ?* show that he was free from the vices into which the handsome were frequently enticed. It is not, however, clear that every one of Juvenal's characteristics was meant to apply strictly to Quintilian; yet there is nothing to prevent us from entertaining as good an opinion of Quintilian's moral character as Gesner entertained. In his professional capacity, he shows, with great strength and felicity of argument, that a great orator must be a good man; and he recommends the strictest abstinence from all licentiousness or immorality in language. Yet he never forgot that he was a pleader, or that a pleader thinks himself justified in resorting to every possible means for the establishment of his case. He thought, with Cicero and the Stoic Panatius, that a good orator, and a good man, may sometimes tell a lie, if it be told with a good motive;† that the ignorant may be misled with a view to their benefit; that the mind of a judge may be drawn away from the contemplation of truth; that we may sometimes speak in favour of vice to promote a virtuous object; that if a dishonourable course appear advisable, it may be advocated in plausible terms; and that vices may sometimes be honoured with the names of the proximate virtues. But his worst offence against morality is that he sanctions the subornation of witnesses to declare what they know to be false.|| He seems to have thought, indeed, that a pleader might do all manner of evil if he could but persuade himself that good would come of it. His flattery of Domitian ¶ is gross; he calls him the most upright of moral censors, a master in eloquence, the greatest of poets, and a deity; but such adulation was sanctioned by the usage of the time, and was not much worse than that offered to the same emperor by Valerius Flaceus, or that of Lucan to Nero, except that poets are allowed more liberty in such respects than prose writers. That given by Velleius Paterculus to Tiberius is of an equally extravagant description. The great merit of Quintilian's treatise on oratory, above all works of the kind that had preceded it, was its superior |