Dionysius of Halicarnassus, born ca. 60 BC, aimed in his critical essays to reassert the primacy of Greek as the literary language of the Mediterranean world. They constitute an important development from the somewhat mechanical techniques of rhetorical handbooks to more sensitive criticism of individual authors.

Volume II contains three letters to his students; a short essay on the orator Dinarchus; and his finest work, the essay "On Literary Composition, which combines rhetoric, grammar and criticism in a manner unique in ancient literature.