Cicero’s treatment of rhythm in oratory, though sometimes vague and as a whole unsatisfying, is important historically. Its very extent and care show that for the orator, no less than for the theorist, rhythm in the classical tradition was a main consideration. It was not something additional, a final grace of style, but an essential element of oratorical effectiveness. Moreover it was a primary and controlling consideration in all that revision which is spent on the shaping of sentences. The oral and auditory ancients taught sentences more largely as movements in time than do the writing and visual moderns. They are thus the more instructive to those whose ears writing and print have trained imperfectly. In every case, of course, ancient or modern, the unit is logical, the expression of a thought; but whereas modern manuals generally confine themselves to terms of syntax, the ancient rhetoric is constantly aware of the effects of rhythm. Its analysis of these, though it leaves much to be desired in scientific accuracy,[97] serves at least to direct attention and stimulate imitation; and more than the modern logic of the sentence it seems to promote fluency.[98] FOOT-NOTES: [1] Besides many incidental references, Cicero left seven works dealing mainly or entirely with rhetoric: _De inventione_ (about 86 B.C.), _De oratore_ (55 B.C.), _Partitiones oratoriæ_ (about 54 B.C.), _Brutus_ (46 B.C.), _Orator_ (46 B.C.), _De optimo genere oratorum_ (about 46 B.C.), _Topica_ (44 B.C.). Of these the most explicit and suggestive are _De oratore_ and _Orator_, which are used as the basis of the following chapter. The most convenient bibliographical guide to Cicero’s rhetorical doctrine is Laurand, L., _De M. Tulli Ciceronis studiis rhetoricis_ (University of Paris thesis, 1907), which also summarizes lucidly its derivation and progress. The best editions in English are: Wilkins, A. S., _M. Tulli Ciceronis De Oratore_, Oxford, 1893 (3d ed.), 3 volumes (introduction, including a sketch of the history of rhetoric and a tabular analysis of the treatise _Ad Herennium_ formerly ascribed to Cicero; analyses, notes, index); Sandys, J. E., _M. Tulli Ciceronis Orator_ ... Cambridge, 1885 (introduction, including a sketch of the history of rhetoric, a brief analysis of Cicero’s rhetorical works, a study and an abstract of _Orator_, and a list of editions, commentaries, and translations; notes, indices).