Quintilian Institutio Oratoria Book 2

An edition, with a full commentary, of Book 2 of Quintilian's Education of the Orator. Quintilian gives important insights into the way rhetoric was taught in first-century Rome. For him, the ideal orator unites technical accomplishment and virtue - he is `a good man, skilled in speaking'. - ;An edition, with a new Latin text and full commentary, of Book 2 of Quintilian's Education of the Orator. Education and the conceptualization of technical disciplines are now focal points of research into Graeco-Roman antiquity, and Quintilian's work is central to both areas. Following the treatment of elementary education in Book 1, Quintilian proceeds to the discussion of the second stage of instruction, provided by the teacher of rhetoric. He gives important insights. into the way teaching was conducted in a rhetorical school in Rome in the first century AD, and discusses the various elementary rhetorical exercises one by one. The second half of the book is concerned with Quintilian's theoretical conception of rhetoric. Rhetoric is seen as an 'art', a technical discipline. grounded in rules and organized like medicine or seafaring, and - less obviously - as a virtue. The section as a whole provides an argument for Quintilian's celebrated claim that the perfect orator is 'a good man, skilled in speaking'. - ;not only a first-rate piece of scholarship, but also provides clear and enjoyable guidance through the often unexplored territory of this text. - Jakob Wisse, The Journal of Classics Teaching