Author: Stoner, Rosalie
Title: The Difficult Defense of Cicero’s Goodness in Institutio oratoria 12.1
Review/Collection: In : Berno, Francesca Romana & La Bua, Giuseppe [Edd.], Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics. From Ancient to Modern Times, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2022, 483 p. [Berno & La Bua 2022]
Place edition: Berlin
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2022
Pages: 83-102
Keywords: Biographie - Biografia - Biography, Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Cicero’s self-gratulatory portrait is advocated by Quintilian. As is well known, Quintilian’s Ciceronianism put an end to the early empire debate over Cicero’s style and the perceived mismatch between his perfection of language and his disputable personal and political life. Rosalie Stoner focuses on Quintilian’s rehabilitation of Cicero as both a man and orator in Book 12 of the Institutio Oratoria. Replying to earlier criticisms of Cicero as a ‘good man’ Quintilian portrays Cicero as a complex personality who acted in the supreme interest of the collectivity and committed himself to the common good with courage. In so doing Quintilian justifies and minimizes Cicero’s flaws of anxiety, self-glorification, and questionable actions as advocate and consul, at the same time protecting his definition of the orator as vir bonus dicendi peritus. [Berno & La Bua 2022, xv]
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110748703-007/pdf
Author initials: Stoner 2022
Title: The Difficult Defense of Cicero’s Goodness in Institutio oratoria 12.1
Review/Collection: In : Berno, Francesca Romana & La Bua, Giuseppe [Edd.], Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics. From Ancient to Modern Times, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2022, 483 p. [Berno & La Bua 2022]
Place edition: Berlin
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2022
Pages: 83-102
Keywords: Biographie - Biografia - Biography, Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Cicero’s self-gratulatory portrait is advocated by Quintilian. As is well known, Quintilian’s Ciceronianism put an end to the early empire debate over Cicero’s style and the perceived mismatch between his perfection of language and his disputable personal and political life. Rosalie Stoner focuses on Quintilian’s rehabilitation of Cicero as both a man and orator in Book 12 of the Institutio Oratoria. Replying to earlier criticisms of Cicero as a ‘good man’ Quintilian portrays Cicero as a complex personality who acted in the supreme interest of the collectivity and committed himself to the common good with courage. In so doing Quintilian justifies and minimizes Cicero’s flaws of anxiety, self-glorification, and questionable actions as advocate and consul, at the same time protecting his definition of the orator as vir bonus dicendi peritus. [Berno & La Bua 2022, xv]
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110748703-007/pdf
Author initials: Stoner 2022
