Institutio Oratoria

The first Roman to handle the subject was, to the best of my belief, Marcus Cato, the famous censor, while after him Marcus Antonius began a treatise on rhetoric: I say

began,

because only this one work of his survives, and that is incomplete. he was followed by others of less note, whose names I will not omit to mention, should occasion demand.

But it was Cicero who shed the greatest light not only on the practice but on the theory of oratory; for he stands alone among Romans as combining the gift of actual eloquence with that of teaching the art. With him for [*]( The younger Hermagoras, a rhetorician of the Augustan age. )

predecessor it would be more modest to be silent, but for the fact that he himself describes his Rhetorica [*](sc. the de Inventione. ) as a youthful indiscreition, while in his later works on oratory he deliberately omitted the discussion of certain minor points, on which instruction is generally desired.