Capstone: Composing and Giving a Speech

I want to give a speech. A real one, to the council.

About why girls should be allowed to read in the Library, not just copy scrolls for the scholars.

Once, in Rome, a woman spoke in the Forum to the three most powerful men in the world, and they listened. Let me tell you about her. Then we shall build your speech, canon by canon.

The Romans divided the speaker’s work into five tasks, and this section has followed them. Invention: find what can be said, using the three appeals and the topics. Arrangement: put it in an order the audience can follow, from introduction to conclusion. Style: choose words that are clear and fit the audience, with figures where they help. Memory: carry the speech in your head, not in your hand. Delivery: speak it so that it is heard.

Before all five comes a question that Aristotle asks at the very beginning of the Rhetoric: what can be truly said about this case to this audience? Rhetoric, he says, is the ability to see, in each case, the available means of persuasion. It is not the art of winning at any price. A speech built on something false may win today, but the speaker’s character, the strongest appeal of all, is lost.