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.

Cornificius wrote a good deal, Stertinius something, and the elder Gallio a little on the same subject. But Gallio's predecessors, Celsus and Laenas, and in our own day Verginius, Pliny and Tutilius, have treated rhetoric with greater accuracy. Even to-day we have some distinguished writers on oratory who, if they had dealt with the subject more comprehensively, would have saved me the trouble of writing this book. But I will spare the names of the living. The time will come when they will reap their meed of praise; for their merits will endure to after generations, while the calunmies of envy will perish utterly.

Still, although so many writers have preceded me, I shall not shrink from expressing my own opinion on certain points. I am not a superstitious adherent of any school, and as this book will contain a collection of the opinions of many different authurs, it was desirable to leave it to my readers to selcet what they will. I shall be content if they praise me for my industry, wherever there is no scope for originality.