This phase invites the reader to become an interactive, self-educating explorer of both Quintilian’s ideas and his words as found in the translations of Books 1, 2, and 10. We encourage the use of this outline of teaching methods and the questions and quotations that follow it to help guide reading and rereading and to put Quintilian’s text in dialogue with contemporary issues and concerns in education.
An Outline of Quintilian’s Teaching Methods
Perhaps the most important aspect of these methods is their coordination into a single instructional program. Each is important for itself, but takes greater importance from its place within the whole. The outline below illustrates how these elements fit together throughout the Institutio oratoria.
A. Precept: A set of rules that provide a definite method and system of speaking. Rhetoric as precept occupies eight of the twelve books.
1. Invention: the finding of ideas
2. Arrangement: placing them in order
3. Style: putting them into words
4. Memory: recalling them for use
5. Delivery: presenting them to an audience
B. Imitation: The use of models to learn how others have used language. Specific exercises include
1. reading aloud (lectio);
2. master’s detailed analysis of a text (praelectio);
3. memorization of models;
4. paraphrase of models;
5. transliteration (prose or verse and/or Latin or Greek);
6. recitation of paraphrase or transliteration;
7. correction of paraphrase or transliteration.
C. Composition exercises (progymnasmata or praeexercitamenta): A learning ladder of a graded series of exercises in writing and speaking themes. Each succeeding exercise is more difficult and incorporates what has been learned in preceding ones. The following twelve were common by Quintilian’s time.
1. Retelling a fable
2. Retelling an episode from a poet or a historian
3. Chreia, or amplification of a moral theme
4. Amplification of an aphorism (sententia) or proverb
5. Refutation or confirmation of an allegation
6. Commonplace, or confirmation of a thing admitted
7. Encomium, or eulogy (or dispraise) of a person or thing
8. Comparison of things or persons
9. Impersonation (ethologia, ethopoeia, prosopopeia), or speaking or writing in the character of a given person
10. Description, or vivid presentation of details
11. Thesis, or argument for or against an answer to a general question (quaestio infinita) not involving individuals
12. Laws, or arguments for or against a law
D. Declamation (declamationes), or fictitious speeches, in two types:
1. Suasoria, or deliberative (political) speech arguing that an action be taken or not taken
2. Controversia, or forensic (legal) speech prosecuting or defending a fictitious or historical person in a law case
E. Sequencing, or the systematic ordering of classroom activities to accomplish two goals:
1. Movement, from the simple to the more complex
2. Reinforcement, by reiterating each element of preceding exercises as each new one appears
Details of these teaching activities may be found in the translations of Books 1, 2, and 10.
A Dozen Questions for Quintilian at the Classroom Door
The Personal First-Day Question: How can I [the teacher] convince a bunch of smartphone-using students to pay attention to such an old book?
The Ultimate First-Day Question: How can I get the students to understand why they are here?
The Identity Question: Are my students different from other students?
The Leap-of-Faith Question: Can these methods be used to help modern students learn how to speak and write?
The Time Question: Do I have enough time to use these methods?
The Sequence Question: Do I have to use every one of these methods to make them work?
The Priority Question: Where do I start?
The Translation Question: How do I put these exercises into words my students can understand?
The Progymnasmata Question: Which of these twelve approaches are the best for this group of students?
The Etiological Question: How can I convince these students that speaking and writing are important?
The Societal Question: Are skills in writing and speaking simply the tools used by the elite to keep power?
The Long-Term Impact Question: How can I ensure that my students will continue to think, even after the class period is over?
All answers may be found explicitly in, or inferred from, the translations of Books 1, 2, or 10 in this volume.
Thirty Quintilian One-Liners for Discussion and Debate
“For myself, I consider that nothing is unnecessary to the art of oratory.” (1. Preface 5)
“There would be no eloquence in the world, if we were to speak only with one person at a time.” (1.2.31)
“It is often difficult to distinguish faults from figures of speech.” (1.5.5)
“A graceful and becoming motion of the body, also, which the Greeks call eurythmic, is necessary, and cannot be sought from any other art than music.” (1.10.26)
“If an orator has to speak (as the next book will show) on all subjects, no man, assuredly, can become a perfect orator without a knowledge of geometry.” (1.10.49)
“So much more easy is it to do many things one after the other, than to do one thing for a long time.” (1.12.7)
“For divine providence has granted this favor to mankind, that the more honorable occupations are also the more pleasing.” (1.12.19)
“Of these professors the morals must first be ascertained.” (2.2.2)
“Let him [the teacher] adopt, then, above all things, the feelings of a parent toward his pupils, and consider that he succeeds to the place of those by whom the children were entrusted to him.” (2.2.4)
“How much more readily we imitate those whom we like can scarcely be expressed.” (2.2.8)
“The master ought not to speak to suit the taste of his pupils, but the pupils to suit that of the master.” (2.2.13)
“For my part, I do not consider a man a real teacher if he is unwilling to teach little things.” (2.3.5)
“The remedy for exuberance is easy, but barrenness is incurable by any labor.” (2.4.6–7)
“For what object have we in teaching them, but that they may not always require to be taught?” (2.5.13)
“Nor will the preceptor be under obligation merely to teach these things, but frequently to ask questions about them, and try the judgment of his pupils.” (2.5.13)
“It will be of greater service to point out the right way at first, than to recall those who have gone astray from their errors.” (2.6.2)
“For as it is the duty of preceptors to teach, so it is that of pupils to show themselves teachable.” (2.9.3)
“One great quality in an orator is discretion.” (2.13.2)
“But these precepts of being eloquent, though necessary to be known, are not sufficient to produce the full power of eloquence unless there be united to them a certain Facility, which among the Greeks is called Hexis, ‘habit.’” (10.1.1)
“For our speech will never become forcible and energetic unless it acquires strength from great practice in writing; and the labor of writing, if left destitute of models from reading passes away without effect, as having no director.” (10.1.2)
“Some speeches contribute more to our improvement when we hear them delivered, others when we peruse them.” (10.1.16)
“Reading is free, and does not escape us with the rapidity of oral delivery, but allows us to go over the same passages more than once.” (10.1.19)
“Indeed, the whole conduct of life is based on the desire of doing ourselves that which we approve in others.” (10.2.2)
“We see, in short, that the beginnings of every kind of study are formed in accordance with some prescribed rule.” (10.2.2)
“It is dishonorable even to rest satisfied with simply equaling what we imitate.” (10.2.7)
“Every species of writing has its own prescribed law.” (10.2.22)
“By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but that by writing well we are brought to write quickly.” (10.3.10)
“For it is habit and exercise that chiefly beget facility.” (10.7.8)
“We must study at all times and in all places.” (10.7.26)
“I even think that we should not write at all what we design to deliver from memory, for if we do so it generally happens that our thoughts fix us to the studied portions of our speech, and do not allow us to try the fortune of the moment.” (10.7.32)
The amplification of an aphorism (sentential is one of the twelve exercises in the learning ladder known as progymnasmata.
Fifty-Five Questions for Quintilian
Is writing better than speaking?
Do adults learn the same way children do?
Is peer criticism better than teacher correction?
Is imitation the same as plagiarism?
Is it possible to plan for future language?
Which is more important, the subject or the learner?
Should a student acquire a good textbook?
Is it important to examine what others have said or written?
How important is grammar?
Which is more important, precept or practice?
Can public correction by the teacher affect self-esteem?
Is writer’s block a modern invention?
How often should the teacher lecture to students?
Is it the responsibility of the students or the instructor to make the classroom interactive?
Should students correct other students?
Is writing or speaking as if you were another person a violation of privacy?
Which rules are the most important in speaking and writing?
To what extent can past language be a guide for future language?
How much does it matter that the instructor be a good model for speaking and writing?
Is it best to write a draft first, or to find ideas first?
Is it a good idea to prepare an outline before speaking or writing?
If a good education prepares both speakers and writers for future language use, would a speaker need notes?
Can memory be strengthened by exercise, like a physical muscle?
Why do some people say that you are undemocratic, favoring the elite?
Are games a legitimate teaching tool?
Is transliteration possible in a monolingual society?
Are you in favor of today’s English as a second language movement?
Is the modern class period too short to use your ideas?
Hasn’t modern psychology refuted your basic learning principles?
Wouldn’t using your ideas in teaching speaking and writing require a whole new educational system?
Can society afford to spend so many years teaching people to speak and write?
Are there any good models for imitation today?
Wouldn’t your plan require an impractically low student-faculty ratio?
Would modern students tolerate transliteration exercises?
Are modern forms of writing and speaking so different that your types of analysis won’t work anymore?
Can your system work in a society with no consensus on the goals of education?
Has modern research invalidated traditional rhetorical paradigms?
Are the twelve exercises of the progymnasmata out of date?
Is it impractical to see writing, speaking, listening, and reading as a whole in today’s interactive postdigital age?
Aren’t speaking and writing skills already fixed by the end of high school?
How is hearing related to writing and speaking?
Would you approve of student group discussions about the principles of future writing and speaking?
Which analogy do you prefer: education is like filling a pail with water, or education is like growing a tree?
Is playing with words a virtue or a vice?
Would it be fair to use the term “learning ladder” for what you call progymnasmata?
Would it be fair to use the term “case studies” for what you call declamations?
Do you think texting is a good invention?
What influence do parents have on their children’s language skills?
Should less literate students be kept out of the classroom so teachers can work better with those most likely to benefit society?
Are we facing the death of the old-fashioned writing and speaking you teach?
How can you keep students thinking after the class period is over?
How can you keep the attention of sullen, disinterested students?
How can the teacher concentrate on the learning of the students and not on his or her own performance?
Is it better to write quickly or to write carefully?
Does every species of writing and speaking have its own laws?
Readers are encouraged to search the translations of Books 1, 2, and 10 for Quintilian’s answers to these questions.