t e c hni c a l r he t or i c 25

the question of how to integrate discussion of the parts of rhetoric with

the kinds of oratory and the parts of the oration remained a problem for
handbook writers throughout antiquity.

Fourth-century theorists
Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, and Anaximenesclearly thought of rhetoric
as concerned with the three subjects of invention, arrangement, and
style, and Aristotle (3.1) proposed that delivery might be added as a
fourth part of the subject. The problem of how to treat invention was
compounded by the development of stasis theory by Hermagoras in the
second century b.c. Various solutions were found, but the parts of the
oration, which we saw in the Phaedrus providing the fundamental struc-
ture of the earliest handbooks, remained important elements. In the
fullest ancient treatise on rhetoric, Quintilians Institutio Oratoria, most
material relating to the content and argument of a speech is inserted into
a discussion of eight parts of a judicial oration that runs from Books 4
through 6, treating in order exordium, narration, digression, proposi-
tion, partition, proof, refutation, and conclusion (in Latin peroratio).
This is then followed in books 810 by discussion of style and in book 11
by discussion of memory and delivery. As in most Latin handbooks,
judicial rhetoric is given by far the greatest attention, with brief mention
of deliberative and epideictic species.
Rhetorical handbooks came into existence to meet the needs of Greek
city-states in which citizens were deemed equal and expected to be able
to speak on their own behalf. In origin they are to be associated with
freedom of speech and with amateurism, rst in the lawcourts, but also
in democratic political assemblies. Freedom of speech on political issues
received major setbacks with the defeat of the Greek states by Macedon
in 338 b.c. and with the establishment of the Roman Empire by Au-
gustus after the battle of Actium in 31 b.c., though considerable freedom
of speech existed in courts of law throughout the Roman period. Ama-
teurism survived in local courts in Greece even in the Roman period; in
Rome, however, professional advocates, or patrons, usually repre-
sented clients in court, and public speaking in Rome, in the lawcourts,
the senate, and assemblies, was practiced chiey by a relatively small
number of professional orators who were highly conscious of tech-
niques and of their own roles.

Rhetorical handbooks like Rhetoric for

Herennius were studied by young men aspiring to a public career, or, as
in the case of Ciceros On Invention, are a compilation of their own