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These minor forms are covered by Aphthonius. So by using Aphthonius in preparation for Quintilian, one could get a complete study of all the possible oratorical forms of writing.
The expanders of Aphthonius expected that even before the boys began that work they should have had inventio andà elocutio, since throughout they have carefully attached the proper technical terms to the various illustrations, showing by what means the different authors had proceeded. Thus these expanders expected the boys first to get inventio and elocutio. The boys were then to proceed through the writing of the fourteen minor forms treated in Aphthonius to the major form of the oration as treated in Quintilian. So they begin by orienting the majority of these fourteen forms to the three causes, which the boys would have had in some such compend as 11d Herennium, to which the editors occasionally refer. We shall see how the theoretical instructions in 14d Herennium and the theoretical and practical instructions in Aphthonius frequently interlock in Shakspere's knowledge, as they were supposed to do. The editors constantly refer to and summarize Quintilian because he had discussed these minor forms as stepping stones to the oration. The editors, consequently, do not want the boys to miss these discussions. They expect them, however, actually to read the corresponding sections of Quintilian. The boys ought, therefore, to have been reading the preliminary books of Quintilian while they studied Aphthonius. After Aphthonius, they would then read or complete Quintilian as their chief theoretical guide to the oration.
For each of the fourteen minor forms, Aphthonius gave the dispositio as well as the heads to be used in inventio. In this way, the boys would study systematically all the oratorical prose types. Quintilian and the oration, with Tully as model, thus become the ultimate objective of grammar school, and Aphthonius with the minor forms paves the way. So the boys must progress through these themes to the oration. All prose work thus shaped up to the theme as the gate-way to the formal oration. So far as structure was concerned, poetry was regarded as being fundamentally the same as prose. Consequently, themes were turned from prose to verse, or back again. Thus the theme was the fundamental form in poetry as well as prose, and consequently training in preparation for the formal theme began at once. The boys first learned to construct a single sententia or "sentence." As soon as they could put as many as two "sentences" together on some subject, argument, or theme, the result might be
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