Aristotle’s Rhetoric itself, though occasionally read and lectured on, had a low profile compared with the works of Cicero and Quintilian.122 On the other hand, Renaissance literary theory was dominated by Aristotle’s Poetics. It was common to connect what Aristotle said about the probable in the Poetics with his definition in the Topics, and there were some attempts to distinguish between probabilis (what seems so the wise) and verisimilis (what seems so to the vulgar).
