What makes a good man?

In the beginning of Book XII, Quintilian says, “Let the orator, then, whom I propose to form, be such a one as is characterized by the definition of Marcus Cato, a good man skilled in speaking (p. 412-413). We know that Quintilian thought that a good student was manlier than a poor student, and Quintilian obviously was concerned with the teaching of morals/morality.

But what makes a good man? Or what makes a great orator? Can we learn to be a good man/great orator, or not? Quintilian then goes on to discuss, “that a good man, in defending a cause, may sometimes incline to withhold the truth from the judge…” (p. 417). To me, withholding truth would not be a characteristic of a good, moral man/orator, but Quintilian is saying that sometimes “we must not consider merely what cause a good man defends, but from what motive, and with what object he defends it” (p. 417).

The entire first chapter had me thinking about what makes a good man such a great orator, if he is allowed (on occasion) to mislead an audience. Maybe I was hung up on the words “good man” vs “bad man” to understand what Quintilian was really getting at, but for someone so focused on morals/morality allowing a good man/orator to mislead an audience seems a little contradictory to me.