Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Harold Edgeworth Butler (Translator), 1.10.5

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[5] For when the philosophers describe the ideal sage who is to be consummate in all knowledge and a very god incarnate, as they say, they would have him receive instruction not merely in the knowledge of things human and divine, but would also lead him through a course of subjects, which in themselves are comparatively trivial, as for instance the elaborate subtleties of formal logic: not that acquaintance with the so called

horn

¹ or

crocodile

² problems can make a man wise, but because it is important that he should never trip even in the smallest trifles.

Institutio Oratoria. Quintilian. Harold Edgeworth Butler (Translator). Cambridge, Mass.. 1920-1922.

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Current edition Perseus

Institutio Oratoria (English) (Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.)

Editions (1)

Institutio Oratoria Perseus (Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, editor. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.) — 1.10.5 focus

[5] nam et sapientem formantes eum, qui sit futurus consummatus undique et, ut dicunt, mortalis quidam deus, non modo cognitione caelestium vel mortalium putant instruendum, sed per quaedam parva sane, si ipsa demum aestimes, ducunt sicut exquisitas interim ambiguitates; non quia ceratinae aut crocodilinae possint facere sapientem, sed quia illum ne in minimis quidem oporteat falli.

Notes on the current edition

Institutio Oratoria

1. You have what you have not lost: you have not lost horns: therefore you have horns.

2. A crocodile, having seized a woman's son, said that he would restore him, if she would tell him the truth. She replied,

You will not restore him.

Was it the crocodile's duty to give him up?

Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 1.10.5

Harold Edgeworth Butler (Translator)

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