Elizabeth R. Lavender (Yale University)
"Similium alia facies in alia ratione": Farming, oratory, and education in Cicero and Quintilian
This study of Quintilian’s reception of Cicero demonstrates the rewards of incorporating rhetorical theory about exempla into assessments of prose literary imagery. Quintilian borrows two key images from Cicero: first, that rhetorical education is like an agricultural technique that “grows” the student (e.g., Institutio 2.4.7, quoting De oratore 2.88), and second, that orators cultivate their speech as farmers do plants (cf. Inst.8.pro.23 and De or.2.96). Prior scholarship on these images has tended to assess them using the rubric that Roman rhetoricians provide for figures of speech, particularly metaphor (e.g., De or.3.155-65, Inst.8.6.4-18). In this rubric, similitude between two things gives figurative speech two functions. By using images of farming to describe specific ideas about educational processes (Morgan 1998), Quintilian is using figurative speech to clarify an idea (tropus gratia significationis, Inst.8.6.2). By incorporating signposting motifs (Fantham 1972) or poetic references (Peirano 2019) into prose via agricultural images, Cicero and Quintilian are making use of the power of metaphor to add allusive texture to speech (gratia decoris, Inst.8.6.2).
In contrast to this approach, this paper turns to rhetoricians’ ideas about exempla and their accompanying theorization of similitude in order to understand Quintilian’s allusions to Ciceronian agricultural imagery in Books 1 and 2 of the Institutio. As a technique for forensic argumentation, an exemplum or “proof case” asserts likeness between one thing and a comparand. This move encourages the audience to imagine further similarities that the subject and comparand might share (Inst.5.11.1-44). In a training context, an exemplum can serve as a model to be imitated (Inst.10.2.1-28). In this sense, an exemplum motivates the generation of further similitudes between the subject and the imitator.
For Cicero, the orator’s expertise in the natural qualities of speech qualifies him to manage human speech both in themself (De oratore 2.96) and in their students (ibid. 2.88-89). Quintilian seems to draw on the resources of exempla theory when changing Cicero’s story on two levels. First, Quintilian takes issue with the similitude that Cicero perceives between the orator’s activity and the teacher’s activity. Quintilian argues that these are similar not because speech is the object of both, but because both act upon natural substances: speech and children, respectively. In Quintilian’s view, children and older students exhibit the regular tendencies toward growth (copia, Inst.2.4.4-5), individual variation (varietas, 2.8.1-2), and susceptibility to manipulation (being tenera, 2.4.8-9) that Cicero attributes to both plants and speech. Second, Quintilian considers how Cicero’s images function as productive exempla. Books 1 and 2 infer from the initial similarities between children, plants, and speech, that similar methods of treatment may be effective for manipulating each toward desired ends. To develop this projection, Quintilian turns to agricultural cultivation as a model to guide educators’ pedagogical decisions. Making the growth of plants a “proof case” and model for rhetorical education makes natura the target of imitation. In this way, Quintilian uses the techniques available through rhetorical theory of exempla to offer early support for his ultimate precept that the orator should live “secundum naturam” (Inst.12.11.12-13).