Progymnasmata is a group of fourteen or so basic exercises that when artfully constructed allow a speaker to produce the gymnasmatum?a full-blown public address. Public Speaking was important to the workings of both the Greek city state and the Roman Republic. The ancient teachers taught their students the art (techne) of public address. They taught them through small exercises in oratory and argument so that they could give their students the building blocks of a speech and asked them to put those blocks in whatever order they thought necessary to produce a well-crafted, interesting, persuasive, and unique speech. The purpose of this text is to teach you how to craft your speeches the way the ancient Greeks and Romans did theirs; the way Medieval and Renaissance Europeans did theirs; the way modern Americans do theirs; by studying public speaking the old-fashioned way, you will be on the road to learn the Art of Rhetoric.

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