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In Italy, in the second half of the XV century, the courts represent a sort of cultural workshop where a mix of persistence and changes was present in the redefinition of the ideas and strategies aimed at educating the princes and the elites, starting from the entourage of these princes in the making. The court of the Sforzas, which has recently been the subject of many studies and research, is an interesting observation point for the analysis of a training method developed for those who were invested with the right by birth to "govern others". Rhetoric plays a lead role in this method and also in the mechanism of legitimization of power and has left a mark on Italian and European history. If it is true that the letter, communication tool in absentia, contributes to the internalisation of a certain lifestyle and of an individual's position in the social hierarchy, as well as being a process whereby princes may be identified at a very early stage, then the sons of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti had many other tools at hand centred on the word. An oratio in Latin, written manu propria by Ludovico Maria Sforza as a teenager to be read in a special occasion in the life of the court, helps us to understand some essential aspects of a learning pathway, lying between the representation of the self in the present and the promise of the future. The document allows the comprehension of some elements of a teaching method focused on a ballet of glances between the young prince, his parents, and the cultural world of his masters.