Marcus Tullius
Cicero (106-43BC) M. T. Ciceronis ad Marcum Brutum Orator. Cum Victoris Pisani... commentario.(Lugduni: Apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536). I.16.46, sig. A2r.
During the seventeenth century, Cambridge prescribed a rigid curriculum for all its students, taught in daily lectures at the University Schools. It began with one year of rhetoric, followed by two of logic, and concluding with a final two years devoted to moral and natural philosophy. However, we can see from the book-buying patterns recorded in Joseph Mead’s accounts that he preferred to start off Christ’s students with logic, rather than rhetoric. When they turned to rhetoric in their second year, Mead chose to teach them from Cicero’s works on the subject: De Oratore and Ad Marcum Brutum Orator. Strikingly, Mead never recommended any of his students to buy Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, the set text prescribed by the university. This has led some to assume that a rift had opened in that period between college and university teaching.
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