Some scholars claim that Book Four of this text has been greatly influenced by both Ciceronian and classical rhetoric. In his introduction to one edition of On Christian Doctrine, D.W. Robertson Jr. states that “the allegorical interpretation of literature itself was a classical practice.” At the same time, others have argued that St. Augustine is instead, “writing against the tradition of classical rhetoric.” One academic, Stanley Fish, has even gone so far as to claim that “Augustine effectively declares the speaker irrelevant as well when he tells would-be preachers to pray for God to put good speeches in their mouths (38).