But in England the first reference to the _Orator_ appears in Ascham's
_Scholemaster_ (1570) one hundred years after its first printing.[168]
Thus the Ciceronian rhetoric of the middle ages was derived from the
pseudo-Ciceronian _Ad Herennium_ and from the youthful _De inventione_,
not from the best rhetorical treatises of Cicero as we know them.
Moreover the mediaeval tradition persisted in England for over a hundred
years after it had been displaced in Italy.

The _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle was known to the middle ages only through a
Latin translation by Hermanus Allemanus (c. 1256) of Alfarabi's
commentary. The Greek text was first published in the Aldine _Rhetores
Graeci_ (1508), and was for the first time incorporated in the works of
Aristotle published in Basel, 1531. As early as 1478, however, the Latin
version by George of Trebizond had been published in Venice.[169] This was
frequently reissued in the _Opera_ of Aristotle together with the
_Rhetorica ad Alexandrum_, long believed to be the work of Aristotle, in
the Latin translation by Filelfo, and the _Poetics_ in Pazzi's
translation. As the true _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, known to the renaissance
as the _Ars rhetoricorum ad Theodecten_, was so frequently published with
the spurious _Rhetorica_, references to Aristotle's _Rhetoric_ in the
sixteenth century are likely to be confusing. Thus it is difficult to tell
whether the _Rhetoric_ required to be read by Oxford students in the
fifteenth century[170] is the one or the other. The surprising thing is,
however, with all the editions and translations of Aristotle which were
available, that the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle had so slight an influence on
English rhetorical theory.

The _De institutione oratoria_ of Quintilian was too long to be preserved
intact. From the fourth to the seventh centuries, however, it was well
known and highly valued by Hilary of Poitiers, St. Jerome, and Rufinus,