Cicero had written seven books on rhetoric, but Ramus chose Orator for the attack which had been inevitable since his original denunciation of Cicero's rhetoric in 1543. There are probably two reasons for this. The first is that he was thus able to enter into the widespread controversy over "Ciceronianism." More importantly, this choice enabled him to concentrate on the one Ciceronian work closest to his own personal view of rhetoric. For Ramus, rhetoric was a matter only of the exterior elements of style and delivery and Orator concentrates on style. It is set in the form of a...