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The Rhetoric of Socrates in Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria

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The Rhetoric of Socrates in Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria chapter 15 The Rhetoric of Socrates in Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria Curtis Dozier Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (translated “The Orator’s Education” by Donald Russell),1 a treatise in Latin from the late first century CE describing how orators should be educated, has not traditionally been regarded as a significant source for the reception of Socrates. Of the more than five hundred testimonia that Giannantoni collects in the first volume of his Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquae (SSR), the twelve2 cited from Quintilian may seem to be of only minor importance, providing only corroboration of what other sources already report about the philosopher’s life, trial, and style of speaking.3 For example, Giannantoni does not print the text of Quintilian’s description of the Delphic oracle’s response to Chaerephon, appending only “cf. Quint. Inst. 5.11.42” to the text from Athenaeus’ account (5.218e–19a), one of very few such references without text in a volume whose overwhelming tendency is toward inclusiveness. Yet the attention Quintilian pays to Socrates warrants closer scrutiny. No friend to philosophy in general—one of Quintilian’s most memorable sententiae is “philosophy can be counterfeited; eloquence cannot” (philosophia … … simulari potest; eloquentia non potest, Inst. 12.3.12)—Quintilian nevertheless expresses consistent admiration for Socrates, as when he refers to the “incorruptible morality” (invicta continentia, Inst. 8.4.23) that Plato’s portrait of Socrates in the Symposium reveals, or calls Socrates “supremely wise” (sapientissimus, 11.1.10) in his handling of his trial. Quintilian also frequently invokes Socrates in support 1 Throughout this essay I have quoted Russell’s excellent translation of Quintilian for the Loeb Classical Library (2001). I have, however, taken the liberty of replacing Russell’s “cause” with “case” for Quintilian’s causa when it refers to a legal action undertaken by a pleader. 2 These testimonia are listed in SSR 3.211–12; but the index in Russell 2001 is more complete, including Quintilian’s reference to Socrates’ rebuff of Alcibiades (Inst. 8.4.23) and his explanation of Socrates’ livelihood (12.7.9), which I discuss in detail below. 3 Quintilian should, however, be recognized as a significant source for the reception of Plato: Inst. 2.15.27 is the earliest surviving direct evidence (there are references to earlier examples in later sources) for readers distinguishing dialogues in which Plato promotes his own views (Quintilian calls these dogmatikoi) from those in which he introduces arguments for evaluation and debate (Quintilian calls these elegktikoi). See Tarrant 2000, 78, and Reinhardt and Winterbottom 2006, 262. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396753_017 400 Dozier of his own claims, either about what kind of an education orators should receive or about how practicing orators should make arguments (e.g., 1.10.13, 1.11.17, 5.7.28, 5.11.3, 9.2.46). In this, Quintilian’s Socrates seems to resemble that of the broader Roman period, whom A.A. Long has described as “a rhetorical topos and exemplar, a constant subject for anecdotalists, a name on which to hang numerous moral apophthegms, and an author of fabricated letters and lectures” (2011, 356).4 That is, Socrates had become a source of authority to be invoked in support of any number of arguments, philosophical or otherwise: if Quintilian argues that the orator should study music because Socrates studied music (1.10.13), he is simply doing with Socrates what everyone else had been doing for a long time. In what follows, however, I will demonstrate the deeply problematic nature of Quintilian’s appropriation of Socrates—both for its self-contradictions and for its egregious distortion of what must have been very familiar sources for the life of Socrates—and will argue that rather than understand these problems as evidence for extreme incompetence or extreme bias on Quintilian’s part, we should see in them a meta-commentary on the very process of appropriation so prevalent not only in Quintilian’s time, but, as Quintilian was well-aware, going back to the immediate aftermath of Socrates death. 1 Arguing with Socrates Socrates first appears in the Institutio Oratoria as evidence in an argument that orators should receive training in music: Quintilian cites a long list of famous mythological and historical figures who valued music, including Socrates, “who was not ashamed to learn to play the lyre in his old age” (1.10.13). A chapter later, Quintilian makes a similar argument that orators should study gymnastics, which he says can “ensure that the arms are held straight, the hands show no lack of education and no country-bred manners, the stance is proper, and there is no clumsiness in moving the feet” and he supports his claim with reference to authorities from the past: “‘chironomy,’ which, as its name tells us, is the ‘law of gesture,’ originated in heroic times and was approved by the greatest of the Greeks, including Socrates himself” (1.11.17). Socrates recurs as evidence a third time near the end of the treatise, when Quintilian is discussing the “duties” of the orator and considers whether orators should receive payment for representing litigants. Quintilian admits that “far the most honorable 4 See (in this volume) Beck for Plutarch’s use of Socrates as a moral example, McConnell (esp. “Socrates and Tyranny,” pp. 359–63) for Cicero’s, and Holford-Stevens for Gellius’..
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