Laudator Temporis Acti

Quintilian 2.9.1-3, tr. William M. Smail in Quintilian on Education. Being a Translation of Selected Passages from the Institutio Oratoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), p. 105:

1. Having dealt at length with the duties of teachers, I confine my advice to pupils to one precept in the meantime, to wit, that they should love their teachers no less than their studies themselves and should regard them as the parents not indeed of their bodies but of their minds.

2. Such dutiful affection will greatly aid their work. For thus they will listen with willing ear and believe what they are told, and strive to resemble their instructors; and again they will gather in their classrooms with joyful eagerness, will not resent correction, will rejoice in being praised, and by their zeal will strive to win their teacher's love.

3. For as it is the duty of the one to teach, so it is the duty of these others to prove themselves apt to learn: otherwise neither is sufficient without the other...

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1. Plura de officiis docentium locutus discipulos id unum interim moneo, ut praeceptores suos non minus quam ipsa studia ament et parentes esse non quidem corporum, sed mentium credant.

2. Multum haec pietas conferet studio; nam ita et libenter audient et dictis credent et esse similes concupiscent, in ipsos denique coetus scholarum laeti alacres conuenient, emendati non irascentur, laudati gaudebunt, ut sint carissimi studio merebuntur.

3. Nam ut illorum officium est docere, sic horum praebere se dociles: alioqui neutrum sine altero sufficit...

J.J. Grandville, School
Thanks very much to Ian Jackson for the gift of Smail's translation, together with several other books.