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Cicero (106–43 BCE), Rome’s greatest orator and one of the principal architects of classical rhetoric.

Learn the six classical parts of discourse used by Cicero—and discover why they remain one of the best ways to organise a speech or essay today.

Every good speech and essay has a structure. Yet few students are ever taught one.

For more than two thousand years, great speakers have relied on a simple six-part structure—a framework that stretches from Cicero to Churchill and remains just as useful today. Many Oxford students have told me that no one had ever taught them these six parts of discourse, despite years of essay writing. Yet, until surprisingly recently, they formed part of every educated person’s rhetorical training. Today, few people have even heard of them.

The six parts of discourse are, of course, just as useful for structuring essays as they are for composing speeches.

Introduction (Exordium)

The exordium introduces your subject and purpose. It may also establish your authority for speaking or writing.

Above all, it should capture your audience’s attention. You might begin with a striking fact, an intriguing question, or a sense of urgency—but whatever your approach, make your audience want to hear more.

Keep it brief and clear. Never bore, confuse, or test your audience, and certainly not in the opening lines.

Winston Churchill’s first speech as Prime Minister begins:

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

In just twelve words, he captures attention, establishes the gravity of the moment, and prepares his audience for what is to come.

Narration (Narratio)

The narratio provides the background your audience needs to understand the issue.

How did the problem arise? Why does it matter? What has already been tried? What does the evidence suggest? Have similar situations arisen before?

Important: Although the narration appears objective, it is also your first opportunity to frame the debate. The facts you include—and the order in which you present them—shape everything that follows.

Consider the difference between saying, “Taxes have risen by 2%” and “Investment in schools and hospitals has increased by 2%”. The facts may be identical, but the way you present them shapes how your audience understands them.

Division (Divisio)

The divisio is the turning point in your speech.

In effect, the division says:

This is the issue. This is why it matters. And this is how I intend to address it.

Like the introduction, the division should be brief. If it becomes too elaborate, it begins to feel contrived.

The rhetorical handbook Ad Herennium (c. 80 BCE) illustrates division with this dilemma from Greek mythology:

Orestes killed his mother, Clytemnestra; on that everyone agrees. But was he justified in doing so? That is the real point in dispute.

Proof (Confirmatio)

The proof is the heart of your speech. Here you present your arguments and support them with examples and evidence.

Aristotle distinguished between technical proofs, such as logical arguments (logos), and non-technical proofs, such as laws, contracts, witnesses, and authoritative testimony.

In the Rhetoric, he observes that ‘witnesses’ need not be living people. Homer, Hesiod, Solon, proverbs, and received wisdom can all serve as ‘ancient witnesses’. Today, we do much the same whenever we quote recognised experts or respected authorities.

Ancient witnesses can be appealed to indirectly, as when Barack Obama echoed Martin Luther King, who in turn echoed Abraham Lincoln, who echoed the King James Bible in the opening line of the Gettysburg Address of 1863:

Four score and seven years ago [i.e. 87 years ago] our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Refutation (Confutatio)

A persuasive speech anticipates objections.

The confutatio acknowledges opposing arguments before answering them. Ideally, it does so fairly and convincingly, though in practice speakers often exaggerate or caricature an opponent’s position.

Modern political campaigns often do exactly this. Terms such as ‘death tax’ or ‘dementia tax’ deliberately reframe an opponent’s proposal before it can be considered on its merits.

One particularly effective technique is concession (concessio). By conceding a limited point, you appear reasonable and fair while strengthening your larger argument:

Yes, that’s true. But the real question is…

Far from weakening your case, a well-judged concession often makes it more persuasive.

If your proof is weak, you might instead begin with a forceful refutation in the hope that no one notices the lack of argument. It is a trick as old as rhetoric itself—and one that is still surprisingly common.

Conclusion (Peroratio)

The peroratio brings your speech or essay to a memorable close.

It usually summarises your main arguments before ending with an emotional appeal or call to action.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Day of Infamy speech, delivered the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, ends with precisely such a peroration:

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

When to Break the Rules

Many great speeches follow this six-part structure, whether consciously or intuitively. But the framework should never become a formula.

Once you’ve mastered its principles, they can also be broken.

Cicero himself ignored his own advice in the opening of the First Catilinarian, launching immediately into a passionate attack:

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

Nor must every speech contain every part. Aristotle regarded only two as essential: statement (narratio) and argument (confirmatio). Everything else is optional.

The six parts of discourse are not rules but tools. They provide a framework within which clarity and originality can flourish.

The aim is not to sound methodical but natural. Techniques such as using simple language, expressing uncertainty (dubitatio), or correcting yourself aloud (epergesis) can all help create the impression of sincerity and spontaneity.

Craft is something that you learn; art, that you unlearn.

Continue Exploring

If you enjoyed this introduction to classical rhetoric, you’ll find many more practical ideas from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero in How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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Exploring the Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece

The Embassy to Achilles. Phoenix and Odysseus seek to persuade Achilles to return to battle. Attic red-figure hydria by the Kleophrades Painter, c. 490 BCE. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich.

We often think of rhetoric as a dark art: the ability to make weak arguments appear strong, manipulate emotions, and persuade people of things that aren’t true.

The ancient Greeks saw things differently.

They did not invent rhetoric because they wanted a bag of tricks for getting their way. Rather, they invented it because their new political order created a need for it.

When people must decide together, they must first learn how to persuade one another.

In democratic Athens, citizens had to argue in assemblies, defend themselves in courts, and persuade their peers on matters of war, law, and public policy. Words, then as now, had become a form of power capable of rivalling shields and spears.

The study of rhetoric would grow into one of the foundations of Western education—and raise one of the deepest questions in philosophy:

Is persuasion a path to truth, or merely a way of gaining influence?

Speech Before Rhetoric

From the earliest times, the Greeks had known about the power of persuasive speech.

In Homer’s Iliad, Phoenix teaches the young Achilles to be both ‘a speaker of words and a doer of deeds’. In the heroic world, the ability to speak was inseparable from the ability to act. A great leader needed not only courage but the words—almost incantations or spells—to counsel, deliberate, and inspire.

For this reason, Homer describes his hero Odysseus as polymetis (‘man of many devices’) and polytropos (‘man of many twists and turns). Unlike his other hero, Achilles, who triumphed through brute force, Odysseus succeeded through cunning, guile, and an ability, in every situation, to find the right words—to cast the right spell.

In Homer’s largely oral world, stirring speech was often imagined as something breathed into the speaker by the gods (this is the origin of our word, ‘inspire’). Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, was also the god of cunning, exchange, and communication. His wife, Peitho, personified persuasion itself. Even the ability to seize the right moment for speech had its own god: Kairos.

But eloquence was not simply a gift of the gods—or Phoenix would not have troubled to teach Achilles. Already in Homer, an art of persuasion was beginning to emerge.

Democracy and the Birth of Rhetoric

The formal study of rhetoric arose in fifth-century BCE Greece, especially in Athens.

This was no coincidence.

Following the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508 BCE, Athens became a radically participatory democracy. Citizens served as jurors, debated laws, and voted on matters of war and peace.

For the first time, political influence depended not only on birth or wealth, but on the ability to persuade.

A citizen who could not speak effectively risked being ignored. A defendant who could not argue his case risked conviction—and, in the gravest cases, exile or even death.

Unlike today, Athens had no professional politicians or lawyers. Citizens had to represent themselves. Citizens had to represent themselves.

This created an urgent demand:

Could the power of speech be taught?

The first professional teachers to answer that question were the Sophists.

Gorgias and the Discovery of Rhetoric’s Power

Among the Sophists, none made the case for rhetoric more dramatically than Gorgias. 

Born in Leontini in Sicily, Gorgias became famous throughout Greece for his extraordinary abilities as a speaker.

He was not merely a teacher of rhetoric, but a performer, master of verbal display, and intellectual celebrity.

According to tradition, when he appeared in the theatre at Athens, he would invite the audience: “Come, propose me a theme.” He took pride in his ability to speak on any subject and defend even the most improbable of positions.

His Encomium of Helen is one of the most famous demonstrations of the power of rhetoric. Seeking to defend Helen of Troy for leaving her husband Menelaus and sparking the Trojan War, Gorgias argues that she would have been compelled to do so by one of four forces: the gods, physical necessity, love, or the power of speech.

Whichever it was, she could not be blamed.

Gorgias compared the effect of words on the soul to the effect of drugs on the body:

Just as different drugs draw forth different humours from the body—some putting a stop to disease, others to life—so too with words: some cause pain, others joy, some strike fear, some stir the audience to boldness, some benumb and bewitch the soul with evil persuasion.

Speech was not merely a vehicle for thought. It was a force capable of changing it.

But if words could be so powerful, who should police them—and for what purpose?

Plato’s Challenge: Persuasion Without Wisdom

The power of rhetoric fascinated and troubled Plato, who had seen his teacher, Socrates, put to death by words.

In the Gorgias, Plato presents Socrates questioning Gorgias about the nature of his art.

Plato’s concern was not that rhetoric could be powerful, but that it could be, and was, so easily abused.

A speaker such as Gorgias might persuade an audience without being right—or even understanding the subject.

Plato compares rhetoric without philosophy to pastry-baking without medicine, or cosmetics without gymnastics: something designed to please rather than to improve.

Even so, Plato did not outright reject rhetoric.

In the Phaedrus, he concedes that truth is more persuasive when allied with rhetoric, and that dialectic and rhetoric ought to go hand in hand, since ‘he who would deceive others, and not be deceived, must exactly know the real likenesses and differences of things.’

The challenge, then, was not to abandon rhetoric, but to place it in the service of truth. It fell to Aristotle to show how this might be done.

Aristotle Makes Rhetoric an Art

It was Aristotle who transformed rhetoric into a systematic art.

Rather than dismissing rhetoric as manipulation, Aristotle sought to understand how persuasion actually works.

In his Rhetoric, he defines rhetoric as the ability to discover the available means of persuasion in any situation.

He identifies three fundamental modes of persuasion:

  • Ethos — the character and credibility of the speaker
  • Pathos — the emotions of the audience
  • Logos — the argument itself

For Aristotle, persuasion was not opposed to reason. Human beings are rational creatures, but they are not purely rational ones. We are also influenced by trust, emotion, experience, and judgement.

Aristotle also identified three main branches of rhetoric:

  • Deliberative rhetoric — speeches about future actions, such as political decisions
  • Judicial rhetoric — speeches concerning accusation and defence in courts
  • Epideictic rhetoric — speeches of praise or blame, such as funeral orations

With Aristotle, rhetoric became not merely a collection of techniques, but a philosophical discipline. Although the earlier Sicilian rhetoricians Corax and Tisias had begun the tradition of rhetorical handbooks, it was Aristotle who gave the subject its philosophical foundation.

As he remarks in the Rhetoric:

It is not his ability that makes a man a sophist, but his moral purpose.

Rhetoric itself was morally neutral. Whether it served truth or deception depended upon the character of the speaker.

From Greece to Rome

The Romans inherited and expanded the Greek tradition of rhetoric.

For Cicero, the ideal orator was not simply someone who could speak beautifully. A true statesman needed both eloquence and wisdom: the ability to persuade, but also the judgement to know what he ought to be arguing for.

As he writes in De Oratore:

Wisdom without eloquence does too little for the good of states, but eloquence without wisdom is generally highly disadvantageous, and is never of any benefit.

This ideal—the union of thought and speech—became one of the defining ambitions of a classical education.

Why Ancient Rhetoric Still Matters

More than two thousand years later, the questions the Greeks explored remain with us.

We still debate political questions. We still have it out in courts. We still try to sway colleagues, customers, friends, and strangers.

And the same timeless principles continue to apply.

People are persuaded not only by what is said (logos), but by who says it (ethos), what emotions it awakens (pathos), and whether it is said at the right moment (kairos).

The ancient Greeks understood something that modern communication often forgets:

Words do not merely express thoughts. They shape them.

Used wisely, rhetoric is not the enemy of truth but one of its greatest allies.

Continue Exploring

If you enjoyed this introduction to the origins of rhetoric, you’ll find a much fuller exploration of the art of persuasion in How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero. The book examines the techniques of the great Greek and Roman orators, from ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos to the practical principles of clear thinking, compelling argument, and effective public speaking.