often compared to the standards set forth by Cicero, particularly influenced by his De Inventione; however, Erasmus' primary goal for Christian Prince and all of his works, as he argued, was to be seen as "a Christian rather than a Ciceronian." The Christian Prince is an example of Erasmus' rhetorically stylistic mastery that serves as a testament to his ability to imbue the teachings of Christ while embodying Cicero's concept of "imitator". For example, Christ told his disciples a parable of wheat and tares growing in the same field and that it was not their responsibility, but His, to separate the two (Matt. 13:24-43). Erasmus, a consummate rhetorician, managed to quell the concerns of many fellow Christians by "Christianizing" pagan ideologies as part of his role in and contribution to the Renaissance humanist tradition. For according to Peter Bietenholz, and in concert with Aristotle’s idea of lexis, the pure knowledge of language, "the humanist, first and last, is a rhetorician, a linguist. His professional devotion as well as skill is aligned to verba (words), not to res (things). His real gesta (deeds) are verba, the words, and not res gestae, the actions of historical significance." Erasmus indeed employs, primarily, deliberative and epideictic forms of rhetoric within Christian Prince, because it has the purpose of a conduct book, also referred to as a courtesy book or hortative and advisory literature. At the time of its publishing, the conduct book was beginning to witness a change in its popularity as a bourgeoning genre though it can be seen in such classics as Plato's Republic and, in Erasmus's own time, with the likes of Machiavelli’s The Prince and Thomas More’s Utopia. Christian Prince serves as a guide for the teacher and the prince as well as all court personnel who might have any reason to speak to or with him and espouses Erasmus' rhetorical approach to Christocentric political theories and pedagogical praxes which he refers to as the "philosophia Christi." The concept of "philosophia Christi," Erasmus' primary topoi in Christian Prince, as defined by Erika Rummel as "a life centered on Christ and characterized by inner faith rather than external rites," was introduced more than a decade prior to the Christian Prince in a similar work, the Enchiridion Militis Christiani, (1504), the Handbook (or Dagger) of a Christian Soldier. At the conclusion of the preface, Erasmus, on the basis of this "philosophia Christi,"