Cicero as Quintilian’s Teacher between Continuity and Innovation

Though Cicero and Quintilian share basic ideas about rhetorical training, they show some differences in their teaching method. This paper re-examines Quintilian’s approach to rhetorical instruction and focuses on the category of actio as it is discussed in Book xi of the Institutio Oratoria. It aims to demonstrate that Quintilian, in addition to making extensive use of Cicero’s orations and rhetorical works, relied on daily examples taken from the stage to explain his precepts : his predilection for an actio agitatior shows that he instructed his pupils in the art of rhetoric by taking into due account the transformations of literary and aesthetic tastes in the early imperial age.