Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory

Reading Grassi's Rhetoric as Philosophy with graduate students right now. His emphasis on what he refers to as Italian Humanism (rhetoricians and scholars from Cicero to Vico) and his use of metaphor as a proof, making him challenging for students brought up in analysis and critique. As we were discussing his short book the other night I realized how incomplete my reading in Cicero and Quintilian is. So, I am listening to Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory for the next few weeks.

Here's a taste of what he has to say in the Preface, where he addresses Plato's concern about rhetoricians devoid of virtue, echoed by Kant and Locke. Note that Quintilian's insistence that the "perfect orator" be a good man, and that ethics is as much the purview of rhetoric as philosophy is based on the need for orators to be citizens, that is, involved in public affairs:  


"We are to form, then, the perfect orator, who cannot exist unless as a good man, and we require in him, therefore, not only consummate ability in speaking, but every excellence of mind. 10. For I cannot admit that the principles of moral and honorable conduct are, as some have thought, to be left to the philosophers; since the man who can duly sustain his character as a citizen, who is qualified for the management of public and private affairs, and who can govern communities by his counsels, settle them by means of laws, and improve them by judicial enactments, can certainly be nothing else but an orator" (9).