Modern researchers in the fields of rhetoric, linguistics, and parody analysis are still using the four categories of alteration which Quintilian called the quadripertita ratio, namely, adiectio, detractio, transmutatio, and immutatio. It therefore appears worth while to trace the history of this system of categories back to antiquity.

In this paper examples are presented to illustrate the use of these categories in rhetoric and grammar. Next an attempt is made to develop an account of the evolution of this system. Most of the available data derive from late antiquity only, but with the help of Quintilian we are able to date the system back to the first century A.D. Karl Barwick and Hermann Usener, dealing with the history of grammar in antiquity, have proposed even earlier periods for the origin of these categories of alteration. Barwick went as far back as the Stoic dialectic of the second century B.C. (Diogenes of Babylon), but no clear evidence has been adduced for this early date. Usener traces the system back to the first century B.C., a date which is more plausible even though still speculative. According to Barwick, Caecilius of Calacte (first century B.C.) introduced these four categories into rhetoric.

Attestations beyond the first century B.C. point in a Peripatetic direction; for the Stoics no evidence has been found for the presence of this system of categories. Yet it can be traced in both the Physics and the Poetics of Aristotle. Indeed, Plato is already familiar with these categories, and as a result, most probably the Sophists of the fifth century B.C. were also.