ANCIENT HISTORY (LITERALLY)

I'M TOTALLY GREEKING OUT RIGHT NOW

A key thing to understand is why rhetoric was so important to the Greek people—so much so that Greek philosophers wrote about it, students learned about it in school, and many learned men practiced it.

One word: democracy.

Ancient Greece covers a lot of time, but we'll focus on the Classical period, which generally covers two hundred years—the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. That's the era in which Greek civilization developed into a democracy.

Because the public suddenly had a say in what was going on in their government, that meant it was suddenly really important to have public speaking skills. (Although instead of calling it public speaking, the Greeks used the word oratory. They were fancy like that.)

Orators spoke in many different public situations, from legislative assemblies to public meetings and even public trials. Sounds a lot like the world we live in today, right? (Source)

Aristotle and Rhetoric

The first big name you need to know is Aristotle. He lived in the Classical period, from 384 to 322 BCE, and he was the philosopher who pretty much came up with the system of rhetoric. He wrote a treatise about it called—appropriately, but a little uncreatively—Rhetoric.

In the first paragraph of Book I, Part 2 of Rhetoric, Aristotle supplies a useful definition of the word. Have a look at that first paragraph here.

A couple things we hope you noticed in that paragraph:

• In the very first sentence, Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion."

• Rhetoric is the "power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us."

You might recall how, in Lesson 2, we set out three purposes of public speaking: to inform, to persuade, or to entertain? The fact that Aristotle's definition of rhetoric necessarily has to do with the "means of persuasion" doesn't mean that rhetoric only applies to public speaking that intends mainly to persuade.

What Aristotle might say today (and yes, we're just going to go ahead and put words in Aristotle's mouth, because we're that bold) is that all public speakers use techniques of persuasion to accomplish their main purpose, no matter what that main purpose is.

Think about that stand-up comedian again, whose main goal is to entertain. Well, a lot of the time comedians entertain us by persuading us to think about a common situation in a new way.

Comedians especially like to persuade us that something we do on a regular basis is actually really, really stupid, therefore persuading us through shame. (And yes, it can be incredibly funny to be shamed.)

Case in point: when Louis C.K. talks about how loneliness makes us impulsively text random people, we feel pretty bashful (who among us hasn't done that?) but we also crack up.

Aristotle points out another important element of rhetoric: the fact that it applies to "almost any subject." In other words, rhetoric has nothing to do with having specialized knowledge about medicine or politics or whatever. You could be giving a lecture on biotechnology, a speech on the importance of volunteering, or a toast at a wedding.

Rhetoric applies to all those situations, because it's about the way you talk about your subject…not the content of your speech.

Before we leave Aristotle, it's worth noting one more thing that will come up again in a bit: Aristotle considered rhetoric to be morally neutral. Rhetoric could be used for good or bad; it wasn't about the outcome, it was about the "means of persuasion."

Plato and Dialectics

Another big, important philosopher of Classical Greece was Plato. Plato had a lot of very big ideas, most of which we won't even mention. We'll bring him into the mix because Plato was actually—gasp!—a critic of rhetoric and oratory. (Source)

He didn't like the fact that many orators used their considerable rhetorical skills to make it seem like there were no true answers to some of life's big questions.

Plato thought there definitely were correct answers to those questions. He thought the way to arrive at those answers was through dialectic. Today, it's easiest to compare dialectic to a formal dialogue or a debate, although the way we used these forms today doesn't quite resemble the way the Ancient Greeks used it.

Plato wrote lots of dialogues, which were essentially conversations between two people who investigated an idea and asked and answered questions so that, together, they could come to the correct answer to a big question.

The main character in many of Plato's dialogues was Socrates. Socrates was usually the one putting questions to some other guy—for example, Crito in the dialogue titled "Crito." In that dialogue, Socrates and Crito are investigating issues surrounding justice.

This isn't a debate course, so we won't spend any more time on Plato or dialectics, but it's important to know that there was an alternative to oratory at the time, and some people—like Plato—thought that dialectics was definitely superior and that oratory needed to be given a swirlie.

ROME (IF YOU WANT TO)

As Ancient Greek civilization began to decline, another civilization swooped in to dominate the world: Ancient Rome. The Romans held oratory and rhetoric in high regard, and many of their ideas about it came from Ancient Greece, especially from Aristotle.

We'll introduce you to two Romans who were particularly influential to the fields of rhetoric and oratory: Cicero and Quintilian.

Cicero

Cicero, who lived from 106 until 43 BCE, was known as the greatest orator of the Roman republic—and that's saying a lot. (Source)

He also translated lots of Ancient Greek texts into Latin, ensuring they'd continue to be read and taught by other Latin-speaking Romans.

Cicero wrote a dialogue called De Oratore (On the Orator) that worked out, through the form of a dialogue, what qualities made for an excellent orator. We're not going to make you read any of De Oratore, so instead we'll just point out two of the big ideas Cicero put forth:

• Like Aristotle, Cicero thought orators could (and should) be able to speak on any subject.

• To Cicero, philosophical understanding and ethics were more important than eloquence and skill in speaking. (Source)

The next Roman we'll introduce you to agreed with Cicero on that second point.

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, 35-95 AD, a.k.a. Quintilian (yes, his name is awesome) was a Roman rhetorician who wrote a (very long) work on rhetoric called Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory).

An important thing to understand before you read a few sections of Institutio was that, in Quintilian's day, the trend in oratory had swerved toward something nicknamed silver Latin, which was "a style that favored ornate embellishment over clarity and precision." (Source)

Quintilian rolled his eyes at silver Latin and did his best to persuade his countrymen that "clarity and precision" were superior to sounding fancy-pants.

And, to get an idea of some other additions Quintilian made to the rhetorical tradition, read sections 1-11 from Book 2, Chapter 15 of the Institutio Oratoria here.

Let's look again at two of the points Quintilian made in those sections:

• "…some think it possible even for bad men to have the name of orators, while others (to whose opinion I attach myself) maintain that the name and the art of which we are speaking can be conceded only to good men."

• Some consider rhetoric to be simply "the power of persuading by speaking." But Quintilian argues that this definition can't be right, because "not only the orator, but others, such as harlots, flatterers, and seducers, persuade or lead to that which they wish, by speaking."

In these sections, Quintilian is trying to persuade us that to call anyone who does any kind of oral persuading an "orator" is just plain wrong. After all, harlots—yup, harlots—persuade people all the time through speech. (Along with a fair amount of body language too, we're guessing. Here's where we take a minute to picture a foxy Roman lady batting her eyes and persuading Quintilian that she can sure show him a good time.)

But Quintilian says that while a true orator does use speech to persuade, he must do so for good. In other words, you got to earn the title of orator.

(For now, we'll leave out discussions of what exactly Quintilian considered "good." We will take a moment to acknowledge something even good ol' Quintilian left out: it isn't just "good men" who make good orators these days, is it? We've got awesome women orators.)

Okay—time to take a break in our whirlwind tour of ancient history. In the next lesson, we'll pick back up in the Middle Ages and continue at our breakneck time-travel pace into the modern age.