This talk explores attempts to answer a simple question: why do we teach history? Classically, history was a literary genre and belonged to the domain of rhetoric. Cicero placed the teaching of history under the care of the orator, for he saw that history serves a public function: it is a kind of persuasion about the just, the advantageous, and the noble. But the history teacher is not simply trying to persuade students, nor can he aim at full comprehension of the past. Rather, he aims at cultivating historical prudence: helping students learn what is important, how to determine relevant information, and how to recognize patterns and particularities in human affairs. In the classical liberal‑arts tradition, history constitutes “material” in support of rhetoric. It provides examples, cases, and contrasts that allow students to recognize their own situation as a historical one. History and oratory share a family resemblance: they both aim at revealing truth in a high style. But history lacks the immediacy and passion of the forum and instead relies on compelling narratives. For the teacher, this means presenting the past as a field of arguments and decisive events, showing how different people understood and contended with those events. We teach history not so that students become experts in the past, but so that they may better exercise prudence in the present through knowledge of relevant particulars and the moral qualities of human actors.