When we were reading Cicero, I kept thinking that I know very few people who would have the attention span or endurance to sit and listen all day to a lecture on rhetoric. I may, of course, have been projecting the attitude of freshman onto those listeners.
As I read Quintilian’s discussion of the orator as a teacher, I tried to envision what the students would be like.
We are told to take psychological factors into account when giving our students feedback. Red pens are out. Feedback needs to have a mixture of compliments and constructive criticism. The outlook shouldn’t look too bleak.
Quintilian’s approach seems to be similarly psychologically rooted. Kennedy notes that he begins his discussion by homing in on early childhood and in subsequent books he moves through the stages of growth to adulthood. We noted with Aristotle that On Rhetoric’s exploration of the various emotions and their origins had a psychological ring to it. Quintilian seems to be carrying on a psychological tradition, but the listener Quintilian seems to be most concerned about is the student.
Some of what he said reminds me of what we have been told to do in order to keep from discouraging our students. He writes: “[I]t will be of greater service to point out the right way at first than to recall those who have gone astray from their errors: first because of the subsequent emendation they merely listen, but the preliminary division they carry to their meditation and their composition; and, secondly, because they more willingly attend to one who gives directions than to one who finds faults” (112).
I picture the Roman student of oratory as somewhat more dedicated than the average freshman, and I think—perhaps because Cicero and Plato have both created students with such enduring attention spans—I have come to think of the classical student as some paragon of academic virtue endowed with a patience, memory, and a whole lot of natural talent. I keep wondering what that student would really have been like.