''De Inventione'' is a handbook for orators that

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...

composed when he was still a young man.

Quintilian Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (; 35 – 100 AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilia ...

tells us that Cicero considered the work rendered obsolete by his later writings. Originally four books in all, only two have survived into modern times. It is also credited with the first recorded use of the term "

liberal arts Liberal arts education (from Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as La ...

" or ''artes liberales'', though whether Cicero coined the term is unclear. The text also defines the concept of '' dignitas'': ''dignitas est alicuius honesta et cultu et honore et verecundia digna auctoritas''. At the request of William of Santo Stefano, ''De Inventione'' was translated into

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intel ...

by John of Antioch in 1282..

References

External links

Translation
by C.D. Yonge
Latin Text
Works by Cicero on oratory {{AncientRome-work-stub