OCRed data provided
for searching only. 72 SMALL LATINE AND LESSE GREEKE
De Conscribendis themselves. One other subject of information necessarily preceded De Conscribendis. From some text the boys would need to get the topics, but no text is specified in any curriculum, though we shall see from other sources that the regular one was Cicero's Topica to teach inventio, along with Susenbrotus or another to teach elocutio.
After the epistle came the theme, with Aphthonius as guide. While Aphthonius is mentioned in four out of the five curricula with Ad Herennium, its relative order is indicated only at Durham, where it represented the next stage above the epistle. It is mentioned in one other curriculum, where the compositional order is the same. At Sandwich, 158o, the boys wrote epistles in the first form of upper school, "matters" or themes in the second, and "questions" or disputative orations in the third. The first form was to read Tully's epistles (Sturm), vary Latin, and be practiced in the types of Aphthonius. The second and third forms were to do the same. It is thus clear that this latter is an omnibus for all three forms, and that epistles came in the first form, doubtless with the varying based on Copia, Aphthonian themes in the second, orations in the third. It appears, therefore, that Aphthonius occupied the next stage after epistles, preparing the way for the oration.
The third and final stage was the oration, with Ad Herennium specified in all five cases, accompanied by Quintilian in three. Since Ad Herennium is mentioned for the most part only in connection with the oration, one might get the impression that it was not used else-where; but we shall see that a knowledge of parts of it was necessary before De Conscribendis and Aphthonius. In fact, it was the basic elementary text on rhetoric, to which all these others were oriented. It is thus advisable to consider it first as the key text to the rhetorical system. Quintilian was then the advanced rhetoric to supplement 11d Herennium and its cohorts, serving as final authority.
We may thus well begin with Tully's rhetoric; that is, !id Herennium. The Ad Herennium was included as the first item in the rhetorical works of Cicero and is regularly referred to under his name, though it was generally agreed that the work had not been written by him. A piece of evidence recorded in the eighteenth century can now be shown, I believe, to be a direct allusion by Shakspere to material in this work. Pistol is trying to persuade Fluellen to inter-cede for Bardolph's life.
Pist. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart, And of buxom valour, hath, by cruel fate,
[ Volume
One ] 
