Definition:
In classical rhetoric, the divisions of a speech: arrangement. Roman orators recognized as many as seven parts:
Observations:
- "From late fifth through late second century BCE, three traditions of handbooks characterized theory and instruction in rhetoric. Handbooks in the earliest tradition organized precepts in segments devoted to the parts of a speech. . . . [A] number of scholars have proposed that early handbooks in this tradition typically dealt with four speech parts: a proem that secured an attentive, intelligent, and benevolent hearing; a narration that represented facts of the judicial case favorable to the speaker; a proof that confirmed the speaker's claims and refuted the arguments of the opponent; and an epilogue that summarized the speaker's arguments and aroused emotions in the audience favorable to the speaker's case."
(Robert N. Gaines, "Roman Rhetorical Handbooks," in A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, edited by William J. Dominik and Jon C. R. Hall. Wiley-Blackwell, 2007) - "The parts of a speech (partes orationis) are the exordium or opening, the narratio or statement of facts, the divisio or partitio, that is, the statement of the point at issue and exposition of what the orator proposes to prove, the confirmatio or exposition of arguments, the confutatio or refutation of one's opponent's arguments, and finally the conclusio or peroration. This six-fold division is that given in De Inventione and Ad Herrenium, but Cicero tells us that some divided into four or five or even seven parts, and Quintilian regards partitio as contained in the third part, which he calls probatio, proof, and thus is left with a total of five."
(M. L. Clarke and D. H. Berry, Rhetoric at Rome: A Historical Survey. Routledge, 1996)
