Le Declamazioni minori attribuite a Quintiliano. ILe Declamazioni minori attribuite a Quintiliano. I

Traditionally attributed to Quintilian, the Minor Declamations (2nd century AD) represent an extraordinary example of a schoolbook: a tool designed by a master of rhetoric (perhaps Quintilian himself) to teach his students the difficult art of public speaking. In the collection, consisting of 145 texts (surviving from a large corpus of 338 speeches), the master's explanations alternate with concise examples of declamation, developed from a wide variety of themes: preparatory cases for legal practice-inheritance disputes or financial disputes-are accompanied by fictional situations, such as kidnappings carried out by pirates, poisons administered by wicked stepmothers, and infants abandoned by their parents. Thus, the declamations' close relationship with myth, literature, and, more generally, ancient imagery is evident. This is the first Italian translation of Quintilian's extensive collection, based on a critically revised text and accompanied by a commentary open to the multiple perspectives of inquiry that have developed around the declamation over the past twenty years, involving philology and rhetoric, literature, law, and ancient anthropology.