(b Calagurris, Spain, 30–35 ce; d Rome, after c94 ce). Roman orator and writer on rhetoric. He may have begun his studies in Spain; he completed them at Rome and there went on to gain both fame and wealth. In recognition of his remarkable skill at teaching rhetoric, he received a regular income from the imperial treasury, the first of his profession to be granted this honour. The literary testimonial to his gifts is the Institutio oratoria (completed c95 ce), a treatise in 12 books on the training of the ideal orator from earliest childhood to maturity. In this one surviving work the references to music form an unusual commentary, since they are based on wide reading and sympathetic interest rather than deep knowledge.
The recognition of a relationship between music and rhetoric goes back to earlier Roman writers such as Cicero, and beyond them to Aristotle himself. Quintilian, accordingly, felt himself to be on firm ground. He did not hesitate to include music, admittedly as a counsel of perfection, among the arts which boys should study before beginning rhetoric (i.10.1–4). The extended eulogy of music that follows (i.10.9–33) seeks to demonstrate its antiquity, importance and power through a large number of examples, most of them familiar. The latinized term musice used here includes dancing but otherwise conveys much the same meaning as ‘music’ in modern usage; there is nothing of the broad sense (practically ‘culture’) that mousikē had for Hellenic writers.
Quintilian seldom mentioned details of instrumental technique or construction. The occasional references bespeak close observation of external details, as in the account of a kitharode's movements (i.12.3) with its rare evidence for deadening the strings of the lyre. At such times, however, understanding may go no further than the comprehension of outward appearances or elementary facts of performance. Thus a maladroit lyre player supposedly might find it necessary to ‘take the measure’ of individual strings (demensis singulis, v.10.124) in order to match them with vocal pitches – an apparently meaningless supposition. Also found is the unsupported statement that musicians considered the lyre to have five basic notes (xii.10.68).
Although he reserved the term ‘ethos’ for a wholly non-musical context (vi.2.18–20), Quintilian clearly assented to a doctrine of musical ethos. He even stated his wish to possess a knowledge of its fundamental principles (cognitionem rationis, i.10.31). A spirited passage (ix.4.10–13) deals with Man's natural affinity for musical sounds and devotes special attention to the tacita vis, the secret power of rhythm and melody that gives instrumental music affective power even apart from the voice (so also i.10.25; cf xi.3.66, on dancing). Quintilian nevertheless considered it a power that reaches the height of effectiveness in rhetorical eloquence, not in musical performance.
This assessment seems typical. Music has almost no importance in the Institutio oratoria save as a propaideutic. Despite express adherence to a belief in musical ethos, Quintilian showed an overriding concern with the spoken word when he dealt with ethical problems. Unquestionably an advocate of musice, he viewed it as the handmaiden of rhetorice, and his comments reveal a limited understanding of its secrets.
Quintilian's Institutio oratoria was known (generally in incomplete form) but not much favoured in the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, however, responded to its central tenet that the purpose of a rhetorical education was to produce a man of good character and cultivation. The treatise was known to Petrarch (1304–74) only in an imperfect form, but in 1416 Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) discovered a complete copy at St Gallen. First printed in 1470, the treatise was widely and generally read, becoming highly influential in the music theory of the 16th–18th centuries.
H.E. Butler, ed. and trans.: The Institutio oratoria of Quintilian (London and Cambridge, MA, 1920–22/R)
M. Winterbottom, ed.: M. Fabi Quintiliani Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim (Oxford, 1970/R)
G.W. Pietzsch: Die Musik im Erziehungs- und Bildungsideal des ausgehenden Altertums und frühen Mittelalters (Halle, 1932/R), 5ff
J. Cousin: Etudes sur Quintilien (Paris, 1936/R)
G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), esp. 449ff
U. Müller: ‘Zur musikalischen Terminologie der antiken Rhetorik: Ausdrücke für Stimmanlage und Stimmgebrauch bei Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 11,3’, AMw, xxvi (1969), 29–48, 105–24
G. Wille: Einführung in das römische Musikleben (Darmstadt, 1977), 166–71
B.M. Wilson: ‘Ut oratoria musica in the Writings of Renaissance Music Theorists’, Festa musicologica: Essays in Honor of George J. Buelow, ed. T.J. Mathiesen and B. Rivera (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995), 341–68
For further bibliography see Rome, §I.
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN