Mere Rhetoric

Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, a podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, movements, and people who shaped rhetorical history. I'm Mary Hedengren. Quintilian was a transitional figure of rhetoric. Born in a Roman province of Spain to a Spanish family at around 35 CE, he lived both geographically and temporally at the peripheries of the Roman Empire. Quintilian was, as everyone was, influenced by Cicero and the Greek instructors, Progymnasmata, which we've talked about in an earlier episode. He was deeply concerned with questions about the education of rhetoric. As a teacher of rhetoric, his students were mostly historians, like Tacitus, or authors, like Juvenal, instead of politicians. In fact, his student Tacitus will later argue that there wasn't much space for rhetoric as the Roman Empire became more authoritarian. Who's going to argue with an Emperor? But Quintilian was deeply interested in not just creating better rhetoric, but better rhetors. The most famous idea from Quintilian is probably his in