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The purpose of this study is to briefly outline the historical evolution of the ingenium in the premodern culture. A rhetorical and literary concept, the ingenium organizes the ancient notion of the capacity of invention and of artistic inspiration, and eventually becomes a central concept in the classic Aesthetic thought. But its meaning and evolution are also intimately related to the discovery of the individuality, and to the tension between natura (the natural, inborn characteristics) and ars, doctrina (acquired, secondary, elaborated characteristics of an individual style). From Plato and Aristotle, through Cicero, Quintilian and Erasmus, the classic Aesthetics articulates a question still meaningful for the modern reflection on the individual : how can the tension between the acknowledged diversity of ingenia and the necessity for a unifying discipline like Rhetorics be ultimately reduced.