“Quintilian emphasizes that the orator must
strive to feel the emotions he attempts to invoke in his audience and must use
the skill of the poet to picture scenes that bring forth these emotions”
What do you think Quintilian’s ideal leader of “corrupt
Rome” looks like?
Quintilian states that he does not think that the "founders of cities would have induced their unsettled multitudes to form themselves into communities by any other means than by the influence of the art of speaking" (Bizzell and Herzberg 390). For Quintilian, being a good orator is essential to the formation of communities—which are degraded by corruption—and one cannot be a good orator without being a good man. Therefore, his ideal leader for a corrupt Rome would be a master of the art of speaking well, and—by extension—a good man as well.
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