Good People Declaiming Well: Quintilian and the Ethics of Ethical Flexibility

ABSTRACT

This essay discusses the relationship between Quintilian’s vision of the ideal orator and his emphasis on declamation. I argue that, for Quintilian, declamation was much more than a useful exercise. Rather, it was a method for training orators to experience the world from a variety of perspectives, something Quintilian considered to be both an essential rhetorical skill and an important quality of the “good man speaking well.” I further argue—taking an exercise from my own first-year writing classes as an example—that contemporary adaptations of ancient rhetorical pedagogy often fail to fully engage with the ethical dimensions of exercises such as declamation. I conclude by calling for a greater consideration of the ethical dimension of ancient rhetorical exercises in our contemporary adaptations of them so that we can truly meet Quintilian on his own ground.

Notes

^1. The third and fourth sources are Seneca the Elder’s memoir Declamations and a collection of declamations fragments from the rhetorician Calpurnius Flaccus.

^2. For a detailed discussion of these exercises, consult James J. Murphy’s chapter “Roman Writing Instruction as Described by Quintilian” in A Short History of Writing Instruction.