Quintilian (ca. 35–ca. 100 C.E.) was born in Spain, but his father sent him to Rome to study law and become a success. He did both, and also opened a school of rhetoric for the sons of Rome’s elite. Later in life he wrote the Institutes of Oratory, a guide to teaching public speaking, which he saw as the most important subject for active citizenship and public life.

My aim, then, is the education of the perfect orator. The first essential for such a one is that he should be a good man, and consequently we demand of him not merely the possession of exceptional gifts of speech, but of all the excellence of character as well. For I will not admit that the principles of upright and honourable living should, as some have held, be regarded as the peculiar concern of philosophy. The man who can really play his part as a citizen and is capable of meeting the demands both of public and private business, the man who can guide a state by his counsels, give it a firm basis by his legislation and purge its vices by his decisions as a judge, is assuredly no other than the orator of our quest….

I prefer that a boy should begin with Greek, because Latin, being in general use, will be picked up by him whether we will or no; while the fact that Latin learning is derived from Greek is a further reason for his being first instructed in the latter….

…This therefore is the place to discuss the question as to whether it is better to have him educated privately at home or hand him over to some large school and those whom I may call public instructors….

It is held that schools corrupt the morals. It is true that this is sometimes the case. But morals may be corrupted at home as well…. The teacher employed at home may be of bad character, and there is just as much danger in associating with bad slaves [employed as tutors] as there is with immodest companions of good birth [at school]…. It is above all things necessary that our future orator, who will have to live in the utmost publicity and in the broad daylight of public life, should become accustomed from his childhood to move in society without fear and habituated to a life far removed from that of the pale student, the solitary, and the recluse. His mind requires constant stimulus and excitement, whereas retirement such as has just been mentioned induces languor and the mind becomes mildewed like things that are left in the dark, or else flies to the opposite extreme and becomes puffed up with empty conceit; for he who has no standard of comparison by which to judge his own powers will necessarily rate them too high…. Further, at home he can only learn what is taught to himself, while at school he will learn what is taught others as well. He will hear many merits praised and many faults corrected every day: he will derive equal profit from hearing the indolence of a comrade rebuked or his industry commended. Such praise will incite him to emulation, he will think it a disgrace to be outdone by his contemporaries and a distinction to surpass his seniors.

Source: H. E. Butler, trans., The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press and Loeb Classical Library, 1920), pp. 9–11, 25–27, 39–41, 49–51.

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