Rhetorica ad Herennium

As Rhetorica ad Herennium is called in Latin, the oldest complete rhetorical prose. The title is formed by the dedicatee, and accordingly, the unknown author called " auctor ad Herennium ". A writer Quintus Cornificius, which is called by Quintilian 3,1,21, is generally rejected, and certainly wrong is the attribution to Cicero that arose in ancient times. But it has meant that the treatise in the corpus of his rhetorical works has been passed and in any case also therefore found widespread use in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The work probably dates from the 80s of the 1st century BC, as Cicero's De inventione youth work with which it otherwise has some kinship. For both of us represented the lost theory of rhetoric since Aristotle's Rhetoric, where they are likely to go back to an already latin authored manual on how some widely word matching points can be seen. In four books, the work of the whole system of ancient rhetoric theory explains quite practical, in particular width the doctrine of discovery of the substance, the inventio, which just also treated Cicero unfinished script. From him, the author differs stylistically, but also in his political attitude.

Expenditure

• De ratione dicendi ad C. Herennium. Ed. Fridericus Marx. Teubner, Lipsiae 1894 -. Reprint Olms, Hildesheim 1966.
• Incerti auctoris de ratione dicendi ad C. Herennium lib. IV iterum rec. Fridericus Marx. Teubner, Lipsiae 1923 -. . Emphasis Teubner, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-8154-1169-6 ( Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana )
• Rhetorica ad Herennium Cornifici C.. Introduzione, testo critico, a cura di commento Gualtiero Calboli. Patron, Bologna 1969. ( Edizioni e saggi universitari di filologia classica 11)
• Rhétorique à Herennius. Texts établi et trad par Guy Achard. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1989. ISBN 2-251-01346-6 (collection of universités de France)
• Rhetorica ad Herennium. Latin - German ed. and trans. by Theodor Nüßlein. Artemis & Winkler, Munich 1994. ISBN 3-7608-1672- X ( collection Tusculum )