ABSTRACT
Quintilian, in Book 3 of his Institutio Oratoria, has a passage on the genre sometimes called laus civitatis, the lauding of a city. This passage sheds light on how a civic discourse regarding space and place can take shape within a democracy: “Cities, like human beings can be praised … on account of their distinction (honor), functionality (utilitas), beauty (pulchritudo) and of those that conceived them (auctor).”1
