Quinctillian's Institutes of Eloquence: Or, The Art of Speaking in Public, in Every Character and Capacity

London: Printed for R. Dutton, W.J. & J. Richardsons, R. Lea ... and J. Cawthorn, 1805. Second edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 2 vol. 8vo. [3], iv-xxxii, [1], 2-448, [2]; [5], 2-458, [2] pp. Contemporary calf with a gilt rule on each board and the spines in six compartments, gilt decorations and a red and black morocco label lettered in gilt on each spine; all edges decoratively speckled. Translated into English with notes by W. Guthrie Esq. With the armorial bookplate of George Palmer. Brueggemann 673. Moss 543. Oxford Classical Dictionary, "Quintilian", 1290. Smith 257. This is the second edition of Will Guthrie's Quinctillian, first published in 1756. Moss cites a review which states that Guthrie's was an accurate and correct English translation of Quintillian's work from the Latin original. Quintillian was a powerful orator, a tutor to Emperor Domitian's sons, and a teacher of Pliny the Younger. This is Quintillian's only surviving work, titled Training in Oratory. His magnum opus was written a couple years before Domitian's death in 96 A.C.E., and foucses on the training of an orator from the beginning to the apex of the orator's career. Quintillian has much to say about what a good education in rhetoric looks like, the technical details of grammar, what makes a good speech and what makes one a good speaker, and much to say on eloquence. The author included a section on the comparison of Greek and Roman authors in rhetoric and speech, and paints the Romans as equally capable as the Greeks in this field of scholarship. Thanks to Quintillian, several details on an orator's dress and gestures have been preserved. A full manuscript of this text was discovered in 1416, and the book remained influential to Europeans until the end of the 1700's. Minor rubbing to the corners and the crown of the spine on volume one, a bookseller's ticket on volume one's front pastedown (Galloway & Porter of Cambridge, open from 1902 to 2010).