Michael Winterbottom

Quintilian and the Vir Bonus

‘Sit ergo nobis orator quem constituimus is qui a M. Catone finitur, vir bonus dicendi peritus, verum, id quod et ille posuit prius et ipsa natura potius ac maius est, utique vir bonus.’ ( Inst . XII, 1, 1). Why did Quintilian insist so strongly on the moral qualities of the orator ? The question has not been persistently enough asked. Austin, for example, thinks that it is only ‘a steadfast sincerity of purpose throughout’ that redeems the first chapter of Book Twelve from ‘ mere moralizing’. And it only takes the problem a stage further back to say that this is a matter of Stoic influence. Even if Posidonius did formulate in connexion with rhetoric a maxim on the lines of Strabos οὐχ οἷόν τe ἀγαθὸν γeνέσθαι ποιητὴν μὴ πρότeρον γeνηθέντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθόν, we must still ask why Quintilian troubled to give this Stoic view such new prominence. After all, ‘oratori…nihil est necesse in cuiusquam iurare leges’ (XII, 2, 26). And it is clear that Quintilian realized that he was innovating. Cicero, he writes, despite the width of his conception, thought it enough to discuss merely the type of oratory that should be used by the perfect orator: ‘at nostra temeritas etiam mores ei conabitur dare et adsignabit officia.’ (XII, pr. 4). This is perhaps to schematize the contrast a little over-dramatically. Cicero had certainly written in the De Oratore : ‘Quarum virtutum expertibus si dicendi copiam tradiderimus, non eos quidem oratores effecerimus, sed furentibus quaedam arma dederimus.’ (III, 55). But there is no doubt that Cicero was not primarily concerned with the moral aspect. As the leading orator of his day, he may have thought it indelicate or superfluous to stress that the perfect orator must be a good man. Moreover, it was not clear that the troubles of Ciceros day were the result of morally bad orators: one had to look back to Saturninus and Glaucia for examples of the evils caused by unscrupulous use of words.

Aldhelm's prose style and its origins

Eduard Nordens great book Die antike Kunstprosa is grounded on first-hand acquaintance with an astonishingly wide range of literature, both from classical antiquity and from the Middle Ages. But at the authors of Anglo-Saxon England Norden does seem to have drawn the line. ‘The two great writers, Aldhelm and Bede’, he says, ‘write, like all Anglo-Saxons, a stylistically uncultivated ( verwildertes ) though grammatically correct Latin.’ There is no need to labour the point that Aldhelm and Bede are not to be mentioned thus cavalierly in the same stylistic breath: we are all familiar today with the distinction between the ‘hermeneutic’ Latin of the one and the ‘classical’ Latin of the other. But at least Norden could not fall victim to another widely accepted doctrine that purports to explain the origin of that distinction: the doctrine that Aldhelms style was influenced by Ireland, Bedes by the continent of Europe. I doubt if this is true even of Bede. But my present business is with Aldhelm; I shall try to show that his literary origins are not to be found in Ireland. At the same time I shall be challenging Nordens claim that his Latin was uncultivated. I shall suggest, indeed, that its cultivation was of a kind that Norden himself would have been uniquely qualified to analyse.

Speaking of the Gods

In an excellent article on ‘The Philosophy of the Odyssey ’ Dr. R. B. Rutherford draws renewed attention to the need to ‘distinguish between the poets statements and the words of his characters’, and adds: ‘This principle also affects the view we take of the gods’ concern for justice in the Iliad : the Greeks, believing themselves in the right, sometimes declare that the gods must think likewise… But the scenes on Olympus which the poet allows us to witness do not generally bear this out.’

Virgil and the Confiscations

This brief article tries to make sense of the first and ninth Eclogues with as little recourse as possible to evidence from outside the poems. In particular, it does without the doubtful aid of Servius, who arguably knew little more than we about the meaning and background. Where I give no references (except for the most familiar historical events) I am conjecturing, or adopting the conjectures of others. I have cut secondary references to a minimum, because the doxography of the Eclogues is too vast to be entertaining. Those who are new to the problems can easily find their bearings in the books of H.J. Rose, L.P. Wilkinson, and Gordon Williams. Old hands will know where I am being original: rarely, of course, if ever, for in this field of scholarship more than most it is true that ‘nihil iam dictumst quod non dictum sit prius’.

THE TRANSMISSION OF TACITUS' DIALOGUS

We possess, to my knowledge, nineteen manuscripts that contain, in whole or in part, the Dialogue of Tacitus. All date from the fifteenth century. All, as their common lacuna at the end of 35 shows, descend from one archetype. Five may, for purposes of exposition, be separated from the ruck. These are Ε ( = Ottobonianus lat. 1455), V ( = Vindobonensis 2960), Β ( = Vaticanus lat. 1862), b ( = Leidensis Periz. XVIII q 21) and C ( = Vaticanus lat. 1518). If we possessed only these five, we should be able to come quickly to a view of their relationships. And though consideration of the other fourteen will complicate our conclusions, it is worth coming to that view first. It has been known for a century that Ε and V are closely related. The evidence has several times been assembled, and SCHEUER demonstrated

The pleasures of editing

Cet article de nature personnelle et informelle decrit les defis et les plaisirs inherents a l’edition de textes latins en prose, a la fois classiques et medievaux. Il recouvre la collation des manuscrits, l’analyse des relations qui les unissent, l’etablissement du texte, les attraits de la critique textuelle, l’importance du rythme en prose et, pour finir, l’orthographe, la ponctuation et le decoupage en paragraphes du produit fini. L’auteur, qui s’appuie sur cinquante ans d’experience en ce domaine (des fiches aux ordinateurs) conclut par une question subversive : vaut-il la peine de continuer a editer ces textes, en definitive ?

Bede’s Homily on Benedict Biscop (Hom. i. 13)

The article consists of a new translation of Bede’s important homily on the anniversary of the death of Benedict Biscop, founder of his monastery, footnoted to signal numerous changes from D. Hurst’s Corpus Christianorum text; discussion of the structure of the sermon, where it is argued that at least two versions have become entwined, leading to some incoherence; some remarks on the relationship between the homily and other sources of information on Biscop’s life; and a short appendix arguing against Hurst’s view of the manuscript tradition.

The Beginning of Quintilian's Institutio

In a previous article in this journal ( C.Q ., N.S., xii (1962), 169 ff.) I dealt with the transmission of Quintilian Inst . 10. 1. 46–131, a passage in which the general picture of the textual fortunes of the Institutio is blurred by complicating factors. An exception to the normal rules is also provided, for rather different reasons, by the opening part of the first book.