"El Ciceroniano", published in 1528, was a very important book in the literary, rhetorical and aesthetic polemics of 16th century Europe, since in it Erasmo offers us his opinions on the famous linguistic, rhetorical and even religious controversy that the humanists, practically from Petrarch, maintained around the language and the style of Cicero.

Seriousness and irony go hand in hand in this work, presented as a dialogue between three interlocutors: Buléforo, spokesman for Erasmus himself and a supporter of "compound imitation," Nosopono, a Ciceronian who sickly tries to imitate Cicero in everything only and exclusively, and Hipologous, secondary interlocutor who supports Erasmus's theses. The task of Buléforo - and Hipologous - is to cure Nosoponus of the unhealthy idolatry that he feels for Cicero and to make him understand the benefits of a "composite imitation" (that of Cicero and other eminent writers).

As was to be expected, the book, clearly rhetorical, was very controversial and accentuated, if possible, the confrontation between one faction and another, generating a fruitful literature around it.