What is the five canons of rhetoric?

Marcus Tullius Cicero, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Marcus Tullius Cicero answers

The art divides itself into five parts, and I have set them down in more than one place because they are the skeleton on which everything else hangs. First, inventio — the conceiving of topics, whether true or probable, that will make a cause appear credible.¹ You must find what you are going to say before you can say anything else; this is where the orator's knowledge of law, history, human character, and the philosophers' accounts of justice does its work, because a man who has nothing in his mind has nothing to draw from.

Second, dispositio — the arrangement of those topics in a regular order, distributing them not merely by sequence but with judgment about where weight should fall.² The strongest point does not always go first; sometimes it goes last, so that it is still ringing in the ear when the jury retires. Third, elocutio — the clothing of the conceived matter in suitable words and sentences.³

This is where most teachers of rhetoric spend all their time and where most pupils think the whole art lives. They are wrong. Dress on an empty body is not elegance. Fourth, memoria — the lasting retention in the mind of the matter and the words together.⁴ A man who must read his speech has already lost half his audience; the eye that holds the page cannot hold the jury.

Fifth, actio — the regulation of voice and body in a manner suited to the dignity of the subject and the language employed.⁵ Demosthenes, when asked what the first quality of an orator was, said delivery; and the second; and the third. He was not wrong, though he was perhaps overstating it to make a point. Now — and this is what I want pressed — these five are obvious once stated.⁶

Any man of ordinary sense, told that he must speak, will understand without a teacher that he needs to decide what to say, put it in order, find the words, remember them, and deliver them. The handbooks teach this as though it were a discovery. What they cannot teach, and what no handbook has ever supplied, is the judgment to do all five well on a particular day before a particular audience in a cause that has never arisen before.

That judgment is the whole art, and it is acquired not from precept but from long practice, wide reading, and the study of what the great speakers actually did.

Sources

1. Invention, is the conceiving of topics either true or probable, which may make one's cause appear probable

   Orations Vol 4

2. Arrangement, is the distribution of the topics which have been thus conceived with regular order

   Orations Vol 4

3. Elocution, is the adaptation of suitable words and sentences to the topics so conceived

   Orations Vol 4

4. Memory, is the lasting sense in the mind of the matters and words corresponding to the reception of these topics

   Orations Vol 4

5. Delivery, is a regulating of the voice and body in a manner suitable to the dignity of the subjects spoken of and of the language employed

   Orations Vol 4

6. who would not understand without assistance, that nobody can make a speech unless he has settled what to say, and in what words, and in what order, and remembers it?

   On Oratory and Orators