Rhetoric, School of

in ancient Greece and Rome, the most common form of higher education in the humanities, alongside the more specialized schools of philosophy and medicine.

The school of rhetoric was the highest level in the three-tiered education system that originated in Greece in the third century B.C. and spread to Rome in the first century B.C.; this system was maintained until the end of antiquity. Elementary school was devoted to the study of writing, reading, and arithmetic, and the secondary school, or school of grammar, centered on readings from classical authors as elucidated by explanations from all areas of knowledge. The school of rhetoric gave students a practical mastery of the art of the word. The beginning program of studies in schools of rhetoric consisted of progymnasmata, which were preliminary exercises in the composition of fables, narratives, chrias, maxims, refutations and confirmations of stories, amplifications, and reproofs. The basic course included declamationes, speeches on invented topics, in the form of exhortations (suasoriae) or addresses in fictitious legal cases (controversiae). The school of rhetoric was intended to prepare its pupils primarily for a political career—which was impossible without the skill of oratory—but as time passed, the school’s cultivation of verbal art became a goal in itself; this drew sharp criticism from practical orators, including Cicero, Quintilian, and Tacitus.

The rhetorical school exerted a great influence on late classical literature.