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LITERARY CRITICISM
All the same, reminiscent of the grammaticus though Qyintilian's list is, it is
quite clearly directed towards the training of the orator. The reading of all
these authors is part of the process of producing a hexis, a soundly based ability
to speak (IO.I.I). 'I am not talking here about how an orator should be trained
(I have already expressed myself on that topic enough — or at least as well as I
could); now I am dealing with an athlete who has already learnt all the tricks
from his teacher: by what kind of exercise is he to be prepared for combat?' (4).
Just as in Lucian (Lexiph. 2.2.) a progression is envisaged from the best poets
through the orators to the heights of Plato and Thucydides, so Quintilian has
given a graded course of reading: Homer and Virgil, tragedy, and selections
from lyric at the school of the grammaticus (1.8.5), Cicero and Livy in the early
stages of the rhetor's education (2.5.19—20), and then finally, in the last years of
the rhetorical training, a whole range of Latin and Greek literature. The list
may seem optimistically long; but the intention is to point to the authors available,
and to suggest as briefly as possible what elements in them should be
imitated and can contribute to the 'strengthening of the faculty of oratory'
(10.1.44). And Quintilian is not all-inclusive: 'if I miss people out, that does
not mean I have not heard of them. . . But to those lesser poets we shall return
once our strength is complete and established' (57—8). Pisandros, Nicander,
Euphorion, Tyrtaeus can wait; meanwhile 'we must get used to the best; our
minds must be formed, our style developed, by much reading rather than the
exploration of many authors* (59). Only when real maturity is reached can we
safely read Seneca, one of whose virtues is that he can exercise the reader's
judgement — for him and against him (131).
' Few, perhaps none, can be found, among those who have worn well, who
would not have something useful to offer to readers prepared to exercise
judgement' (40). And even though Quintilian claims to pick out only the most
eminent (45), his list remains long. This fits in closely with Quintilian's view
of imitation. Even if there were a supreme model for an orator — and Cicero
comes close to being that — our human weakness would prevent us being able
in practice to reproduce him whole (10.2.25—6). 'A prudent man should, if he
can, make his own what he sees to be best in every author. . . We should put
before our eyes the good points of a number of orators, so that one thing may
stick from one source, one from another, and so that we can fit each in at the
right place' (26). Nor does this apply only to the reading of orators; there is
grist for the mill to be found everywhere. The reading of poetry has its advantages
for the orator as well as its dangers (10.1.27—30). Hence the attention
Quintilian pays to poets in his list, but hence too his constant care to define
how far they can be of use to the orator. On the smaller scale, we see Alcaeus
as a poet who is 'often similar to an orator' 1 though he 'also wrote trivia, and
1 Similar phrases in 65 (comedy), 74 (Theopompus); cf. 90 on Lucan.
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