8vo. [32], 458pp, [22]. Contemporary blind-tooled calf. Extremities worn, loss to spine. Hinges exposed, without pastedowns/free-endpapers, early ownership inscriptions of George and John Risley to title page.

A late sixteenth century edition, with two early English ownership inscriptions, of the Declamations, nineteen model speeches on fictitious court cases, commonly ascribed to the Roman rhetorician Quintilian, though likely composed by an unknown author or authors, perhaps in the second or third centuries A.D. These are the only extant full Latin controversiae, the practice speeches whose composition and delivery formed the mainstay of Roman higher education. Declamation therefore had a profound effect on the literature of the Empire, and also on subsequent European literature, rhetoric, and education.

The present edition additionally contains excerpts from the Declamationes of Roman senator and consul of the second century Calpurnius Flaccus, and Dialogus de caussis corruptae Eloquentiae, attributed to Tacitus, edited by French Calvinist lawyer, writer, and bibliophile Pierre Pithou (1539-1596).