Rem tene, verba sequentur

The Latin phrase Rem tene, verba sequentur can be translated in English as "grasp the matter, and the words will follow."

The rhetorician Gaius Julius Victor attributes this quote to Cato the Elder in the didactic work Ars Rhetorica.

This maxim, whose force can be expressed as, "understand clearly the argument of your speech and the words will follow of their own accord", is something of a novelty in rhetoric. Where other authors might stress the importance of a speech's structure, stylistic devices or rhetorical devices, with this quote, Cato instead argues that content comes first, and that the actual act of delivering a speech will then come as if spontaneously.