He is said also to have written a treatise on military tactics when he was nineteen; which again, no doubt, means that he had exercised himself by translating such an essay from the Greek.

This, happily, does not remain.

But we have four books, Rhetoricorum ad C.Herennium, and two books De Inventione, attributed to his twentieth and twenty-first years, which are published with his works, and commence the series.

Of all that we have from him, they are perhaps the least worth reading; but as they are, or were, among his recognized writings, a word shall be said of them in their proper place.
The success of the education of Cicero probably became a commonplace among Latin school-masters and Latin writers.

In the dialogue De Oratoribus, attributed to Tacitus, the story of it is given by Messala when he is praising the orators of the earlier age.