On Training for Public Speaking

On Training for Public Speaking (Ancient Greek: Περὶ λόγου ἀσκήσεως, romanized: Peri logou askēseōs, Oration 18 in modern corpora) is a short text written by Dio Chrysostom in the late first or early second century AD.

Professional orators, like Dio, often trained from childhood and speaking was for them a full-time occupation, but some oratorical ability was expected of all public figures.

[2] Dio's text offers advice for a man of affairs who does not have time for full oratorical training but nevertheless wishes to expand his capabilities.

Similar lists are attested from the late first-century BC Greek literary critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Imitation 2), and the mid-first century AD Latin rhetorician Quintilian (Institutes 10.1.37-131).

[3] Dio's text takes the form of a letter to a man whom he does not name but identifies as a "statesman" (politikos aner), who is "in the very prime of life and second to no one in influence, who possesses great wealth and has every opportunity to live in luxury by day and night" but nevertheless chooses to pursue oratory (sections 1–2).

Hans von Arnim suggested that the addressee might have been a leading aristocrat in one of the Greek cities of Asia Minor or perhaps the Roman emperor Vespasian before his accession.