ABSTRACT
The teaching of grammar, with which the secondary stage of education began, laid the foundations both for the subsequent study of the poets and for the training of the future orator. [1] It may be seen to have fallen into two major parts. [2] The first part was mainly formal, and was concerned with classification of the letters, the scansion of verse, the parts of speech, and declension and conjugation. [3] The second part dealt with correctness in speech and in writing, beginning, on the negative side, with examples of the barbarisms and solecisms which must be avoided, and proceeding, on the positive side, to the establishment of criteria by which one should decide what is correct in doubtful cases. The first part was essential in both Greek and Latin, but the second part, with which Quintilian himself deals at considerable length, must have been, in practice, preponderantly concerned with Latin; for it was of overriding importance that the boy should learn to speak his own language correctly.
