The precepts of rhetoric according to Cicero and Clark or How to make a speech clear, convincing, and agreeable

I. The three aspects of the subject:

1. the speaker's resources (vis oratoris)

2. the speech itself with a beginning, middle, end (oratio)

3. the speech situation--the nature of the case and the audience (quaestio)

II. The five subdivisions of (1) above (vis oratoris)

1. Inventio: to find out what to say

2. Dispositio: to arrange that which is found

3. Elocutio: to clothe with language

4. Memoria: to secure it in memory

5. Pronuntiatio or actio: the delivery in voice and action

III. Aspect (2), oratio, has been subdivided a number of ways

1. Aristotle used two subdivisions

a. the statement of the case

b. its proof

2. The Ad Herennim featured a six-fold division, which was popular through much history

a. Exordium: opening to render audience attentive and friendly

b. Narratio: speaker's statement of facts

c. Divisio or partitio: forcast of main points

d. Confirmatio: affirmative proof

e. Confutatio: refutation or rebuttal of other side

f. Conclusio or peroratio: conclusion

3. Cicero and others combined to end up with 4

a. exordium: opening

b. narratio: statement of facts (includes the partitio/divisio)

c. confirmatio (with confutatio)

d. peroratio: conclusion

IV. Aspect (3), the quaestio, (the speech situation/question) may be one of two kinds:

1. a general discussion (quaestio infinita)

2. a particular case (quaestio finia) (causa)

a. the forensic (genus judiciale)

b. the epideictic (genus demonstrativum)

c. the deliberative (genus deliberativium)