Quintilian, properly Marcus Fabius Quintilianus c.35-c.100AD
Roman rhetorician

Born in Calagurris (Calahorra), Spain, he studied oratory at Rome, and returned there in 68AD in the train of Servius Sulpicius Galba. He became eminent as a pleader, and still more as a state teacher of the oratorical art, his pupils including Pliny the Younger and the two great-nephews of Domitianus. The emperor named him consul and gave him a pension. His reputation rests on his great work Institutio Oratoria ('Education of an Orator'), a complete system of rhetoric in 12 books, remarkable for its sound critical judgements, purity of taste, admirable form and the perfect familiarity it exhibits with the literature of oratory. Quintilian's own style is excellent, though not free from the florid ornament and poetic metaphor characteristic of his age.