Tradition and Change in Quintilian

FEW authors have suffered such variation in reputation as Quintilian. Justly esteemed in his own lifetime and for a space thereafter, he enjoyed special favour during the Renaissance, the Institutio Oratoria securing more than a hundred reprintings in the century after the discovery of the complete manuscript in 1416. He was generally ranked in this period as the second or third among Latin authors, a position which he maintained even into the seventeenth century. However, there then followed a rapid loss of interest among classical scholars who ignored his work almost completely and who have made only slight amends in recent decades. Peterson published his edition of Book 10 in 1891, a most successful example of editorial skill which should have directed attention to a neglected field. Even so, another thirty-three years passed before Colson's edition of Book 1 appeared in 1924, and still another twenty-four before the issue of Austin's edition of Book 12 in 1948. As this intermittent and incomplete publication would suggest, Quintilian plays little part in the reading of the modern classical scholar who usually knows only the first section of Book 10, containing the celebrated criticisms of Greek and Roman writers. This is doubly unfortunate, for Quintilian is not only an author who deserves to be read but who needs to be read extensively if some significant features of his work are to be fully understood. Some final indication of our continued neglect is the fact that the complete text of Quintilian is precariously in print today only in the Garnier edition of Bornecque, for the Teubner and similar texts are to be obtained only after diligent search, and the Loeb text and translation is periodically unavailable. It is to be hoped that the Oxford Press which long ago hospitably included such authors as Asconius and Isidore of Seville in its Classical Series will soon find room for the text of Quintilian, and that some scholar will ultimately undertake a commentary on the whole work, a task which has not been attempted since the close of the eighteenth century. Although Quintilian is a significant figure in the history of education and of literary criticism, there are relatively few accounts of these subjects which do him ample justice. In fact, it is not uncommon to find otherwise excellent books in these fields taking little or no notice of his important contribution.' Such instances are the more surprising in view of the striking fact that all scholars who do consider the writings of Quintilian speak with enthusiasm of him, complaining about the neglect

Political science · Historical and Literary Analyses · Medieval European Literature and History

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