Based on what you’ve read from Rhetorica ad Herrenium, and from Cicero and Apthonius, what do you think of Cicero’s critique?

As Alexander and his heir carried Greek culture across the Mediterranean world a system of education developed that enabled Greeks living abroad as well as non-Greeks to learn Greek language and culture. At the heart of this system was instruction in rhetoric, including the increased popularity of the progymnasmata and the development of the classical canon and stasis analysis. Cicero, however, writing in the first century BCE, dismissed the Hellenistic system as too rigid, with its focus on rules and formulae for composing speeches, and over the next 2000 years, many observers have agreed with him. Based on what you’ve read from Rhetorica ad Herrenium, and from Cicero and Apthonius, what do you think of Cicero’s critique?

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