| Summary: | <p>This is a study about the didactic conception of Quintilian’s <em>Institutio oratoria</em>. Building on recent scholarship on ancient didactic prose and poetry and focusing particularly on Quintilian’s construction of an authoritative didactic persona, his self-profiling against other writers and didactic figures, and ‘proleptic’ strategies through which he deflects responsibility for the potential lack of success of students who follow his advice, I examine how throughout the <em>Institutio</em>, Quintilian persuades readers of the validity of the educational programme he presents.</p>
<p> Chapter one analyses how Quintilian introduces himself and his didactic project at the start of the Institutio and considers the overall conception of the work. I show how the impression of a gradually progressing didactic journey is conveyed and argue that the criteria that Katharina Volk identifies for didactic poetry can be fruitfully applied to the <em>Institutio</em>. </p>
<p>Chapter two reconsiders Quintilian’s relationship to Cicero. I argue that he acknowledges Cicero’s authority on rhetorical theory but strives to assert his own independence as a writer. I suggest that Quintilian celebrates Cicero’s oratory but denies that he was the ideal orator, maintaining that ‘now’ is the best moment to reach the ideal. This balancing act is key for the didactic framework of the <em>Institutio</em>, which would be undermined if the ideal orator had already existed or could not possibly exist.</p>
<p>Chapter three highlights the main differences between Quintilian’s and Cicero’s conceptions of the ideal orator, presents the key characteristics of his conception in the <em>Institutio</em>, and suggests that there are significant, if polemical, elements of a reception of Seneca the Younger.</p>
<p>Chapter four discusses how Quintilian contrasts ‘good’ style with two currents of stylistic corruption, ‘archaism’ and ‘modernism’, borrowing Senecan vocabulary to describe the latter but simultaneously using it to describe Seneca’s own writing. This chapter raises a central question: how can Quintilian’s criticism of contemporary oratory coexist with his predictions of its bright future? The answer I propose is that by linking modernism, the predominant current of corruption, to Seneca, Quintilian can present it as an anachronistic remnant of the Neronian past, which must be replaced by his own Flavian project. </p>
<p>In a nutshell, this thesis aims to analyse the didactic conception of the <em>Institutio</em>, setting these techniques against the background of the work’s overall construction, goal, and models. </p>
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