Rhetoric & Orators Rules: Some Facts

The orator’s three tasks:

  1. Docere - to teach
  2. Delectare - to delight
  3. Movere - to move

The five-part division of oratory:

  1. invention or discovery
  2. arrangement
  3. style
  4. memory
  5. delivery

Three kinds of speechs:

  1. forensic
  2. deliberative
  3. panegyric

The proper sections into which a speech is divided:

  1. exordium secures attention of audience
  2. statement of case
  3. proof
  4. refutation of the opponents case
  5. peroration or summary

[All of this may be found in Cicero’s De oratore, in dialogue form: mostly Crassus and Antonius, great orators whom Cicero had heard and admired, speak.

From Seigel, Rhetoric, pp. 5-7.]