This volume collects the most significant outcomes of the research carried out by the author over the last six years, in the form of four essays sharing a focus on Quintilian and rhetorical education in the Roman imperial age. The first chapter addresses Institutio oratoria 2.17–21, in which Quintilian lays out his own concept of rhetoric as a profession: R. accounts for Quintilian’s view of the role of the teacher of rhetoric, intended not just as a technician of the word, but as a scholar who bases his pedagogical method on study and research, setting a moral example for his students and serving as the director of the education of the future orator in all the disciplines of what we would call the liberal arts.
In the second chapter R. offers useful reflections on the broad topic of the presence of beauty in rhetorical theory, accounting for both the Greek and the Roman theoretical trad- ition. R.’s survey of this topic touches upon the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, Dionysus of Halicarnassus and On the Sublime; compared to the Greek speculation, the Roman tradition appears to be more interested in assessing virtues and vices of speeches rather than in discussing beauty per se. Due to the pervasive presence of rhetoric in Roman education, such reflection on beauty was not bound to remain just a topic for specu- lation: R. looks at some passages from Cicero, Valerius Maximus and Quintilian, so as to show some practical fallout of the theoretical tradition in literary practice. [...]