An edition, with a new Latin text and full commentary, of Book 2 of Quintilian's Education of the Orator. Education and the conceptualization of technical disciplines are now focal points of research into Graeco-Roman antiquity, and Quintilian's work is central to both areas. Following thetreatment of elementary education in Book 1, Quintilian proceeds to the discussion of the second stage of instruction, provided by the teacher of rhetoric. He gives important insights into the way teaching was conducted in a rhetorical school in Rome in the first century AD, and discusses thevarious elementary rhetorical exercises one by one. The second half of the book is concerned with Quintilian's theoretical conception of rhetoric. Rhetoric is seen as an 'art', a technical discipline grounded in rules and organized like medicine or seafaring, and - less obviously - as a virtue. Thesection as a whole provides an argument for Quintilian's celebrated claim that the perfect orator is 'a good man, skilled in speaking'.

Tobias Reinhardt is Fellow and Tutor in Classics, Somerville College, University of Oxford. Michael Winterbottom is Corpus Christi Professor of Latin Emeritus, University of Oxford, and Fellow of the British Academy.