Classical and later. Once a speaker had found his arguments, he had to put them in order, choose his words and deliver the speech. Later teachers organized the whole art into five parts, often called the five canons: invention (heuresis), arrangement (taxis), style (lexis), memory (mnēmē) and delivery (hypokrisis). The full five-part scheme is set out most clearly in later sources, especially Roman handbooks of the first century BCE that drew on Greek teaching, but its pieces are discussed by Aristotle and the classical orators.

Arrangement

Classical. Aristotle, impatient with handbooks that multiplied parts of a speech, said that only two are necessary: stating the case and proving it. In practice, he allowed four: an introduction (prooimion), which prepares the audience and makes them attentive and well disposed; the statement or narration of the facts; the proof; and the epilogue, which disposes the audience favorably toward the speaker and against the opponent, amplifies the case, rouses emotion, and reminds the audience of the main points. He ended his own discussion of the epilogue with an example of a closing in the plain, final style he recommended: “I have spoken; you have heard; you know the facts; now give your judgment.”

Style

Classical. In Book Three, Aristotle discussed style. Its first virtue, he said, is clarity: speech that is not clear fails to do its job. It must also be appropriate, in Greek to prepon, neither too low nor too lofty for the subject, the speaker and the audience. A humble subject in grand language seems ridiculous; a great subject in mean language seems flat. He praised metaphor as the greatest ornament of style, because it teaches us something new by showing a likeness between things. He admired the periodic sentence, one with a clear beginning and end, which the listener can take in as a whole, and he recommended that prose have rhythm, but not meter, so that it is pleasing without sounding like poetry.

Gorgias's showy style, full of matching clauses and rhyming endings, was by Aristotle's time considered excessive. Lysias's plain style, by contrast, was admired for sounding natural. Later teachers developed a theory of three styles: plain, middle and grand, each suited to different purposes.

Memory

Later source, older story. Greek speakers usually delivered speeches from memory. Later writers, especially Cicero, tell a story about the poet Simonides, who was said to have left a banquet just before the roof collapsed, crushing the guests beyond recognition. Simonides could identify each body by remembering where each guest had been sitting. From this, the story goes, he invented the method of places: to remember a speech, imagine a familiar building and place an image for each point in a different room, then walk through the building in your mind as you speak. Whether or not Simonides invented it, the method was widely taught in antiquity and is still used by memory champions today.

Delivery

Classical. Aristotle noted that delivery, the management of voice and gesture, had not yet been studied as an art, though it greatly affects success, because of the weakness of audiences. It concerns volume, pitch and rhythm. The Greek word for delivery, hypokrisis, is the same word used for an actor's performance.

The greatest Athenian orator, Demosthenes (384 to 322 BCE), took delivery seriously. According to later writers, when asked what was most important in oratory, he answered: delivery; and second, delivery; and third, delivery. The biographer Plutarch tells how Demosthenes, born with a weak voice and a stammer, trained himself: he built an underground study, shaved half his head so he would be too embarrassed to go out, spoke with pebbles in his mouth to improve his pronunciation, recited while running uphill to strengthen his breath, and practiced speaking over the noise of the waves.

Worked example: arrange a short speech

Build a short forensic speech in Aristotle's four parts. The case: you are accused of letting your goats graze on a neighbor's land.

1. Introduction: “Jurors, I have never stood in a court before, and I wish I did not now. I am a farmer, not a speaker. I ask only that you hear me as you would wish to be heard.” (Goodwill and humility: ethos.)
2. Statement: “On the day in question, my goats were in my own fold. My son was with them from dawn to dusk.”
3. Proof: “My son will swear to it. The fence between our lands was broken by the storm, as all our neighbors know. Is it likely I would let my goats loose on land of a man who has sued me twice before?” (Witness, fact and probability.)
4. Epilogue: “He accuses me because he wants my field. I have told you the truth. My son has sworn to it. Now give your judgment.”

Then practice delivering it aloud, slowly and clearly, without notes, using the method of places. That is the whole art in miniature, from invention to delivery. Greek students repeated this process hundreds of times.