Quintilian

Quintilian, born in Spain about 35 CE, became a widely known and highly successful teacher of rhetoric in Rome. The Orator's Education (Institutio Oratoria), a comprehensive training programme in twelve books, draws on his own rich experience. It is a work of enduring importance, not only for its insights on oratory, but for the picture it paints of education and...

The Major Declamations stand out for their unique contribution to our understanding of the final stage in Greco-Roman rhetorical training. These exercises, in which students learned how to compose and deliver speeches on behalf of either the prosecution or the defence at imaginary trials, demonstrate how standard themes, recurring situations and arguments, and technical rules were to be handled by...