ABSTRACT
"Rhetoric", writes classicist Manfred Fuhrmann, "like all subjects of instruction in the ancient world, was created by the Greeks; the Romans dutifully adopted both its forms and its subject-matter, which had acquired their ultimate outlines in the Hellenistic period". At the time of its founding as a sovereign political entity, Rome was a republic governed by elected executives, a senate, and popular assemblies. Rome's rhetorically centered educational system differed from modern educational approaches in important ways. Marcus Tullius Cicero was the greatest speaker and one of the most prolific writers of his day, a philosopher and politician with an unparalleled master of argument with an astonishing understanding of his Roman audiences. In De Inventione, Cicero advances his best-remembered contribution to the history of rhetoric, the five canons of oratory. Rhetoric, the ability to speak and write clearly and persuasively, was for the Romans the most practical and potent of linguistic abilities.
