CORNIFICIUS

The supposed author of an anonymous treatise on rhetoric in four books, dedicated to a certain Herennius (Rhetorica ad Herennium.) This is the oldest Latin treatise of the sort that we possess. It was written in the time of Sulla, about 85 B.C., by a partisan of the Marian faction, who, though not a professed rhetorician, was an educated man, as is shown by his accomplishments and his correct style. Though he followed Greek models, he endeavours to treat his subject from a Roman or national point of view, and therefore gives Latin equivalents for the Greek technical terms. His examples, too, he takes from older Roman writings, or makes them himself. Cicero, who passed for the author in late antiquity, used the same Greek original in his De Inventione.