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If you’re looking for advice on how to become a great public speaker, there are plenty of people you can go to. Speaking coaches, VCs, Hollywood directors, jazz musicians, and MIT professors have all offered worthy tips and suggestions.

But perhaps the most compelling advice of all comes from the most unlikely source — ancient Greek philosophers. Before you groan and click away, hear me out.

Much has changed in the 2,500 or so years since Aristotle and Plato were walking around an agora discussing their ideas. Our lifestyles, tech, and understanding of the world are wildly different. But human beings themselves haven’t changed much.

Evolution is slow. Our brains are basically wired the same way then as now. And what worked in ancient Athens — before speakers had the advantage of fancy slides and eye-catching graphics — will almost certainly work now. Plus, these ideas have withstood millennia. They must be pretty worthwhile.

You could, of course, take whole college courses on what the Greeks had to say about what they called rhetoric and what most modern entrepreneurs would call delivering a great speech or presentation. But for time-pressed professionals, let’s start with the fundamentals. Ancient Greek thinkers taught that every convincing speech should contain three essential elements.

1. Ethos

Ethos is the ancient Greek word for character. Aristotle taught that speakers must establish their ethos — their character, credibility, or authority to speak on a subject — for their words to persuade anyone. Without this essential first ingredient, even the most clever and well-worded arguments will fall flat.

“Your audience needs to know (or to believe, which in rhetoric adds up to the same thing) that you are trustworthy, that you have a locus standi to talk on the subject, and that you speak in good faith. You need your audience to believe that you are, in the well-known words, ‘A pretty straight kind of guy,’ ” journalist Sam Leith explained in his book on great rhetoric through the ages, Words Like Loaded Pistols.

How do you establish this good standing with the audience? “No one likes a bragger or a name-dropper. But underselling yourself can be just as damaging to your chances of making an impact with your presentation,” warns Big Think’s Kris Flegg. “Often, the right balance can be struck with case studies and examples.”

You might mention people or companies you’ve worked with to use social proof to establish your credentials. Academics might mention their university or affiliations. Hard numbers help too. “It’s much easier to tell an audience that you’ve been coaching for 15 years than it is to tell them that you’re the best coach around,” Flegg points out.

The idea isn’t to toot your horn to enjoy the sweet sound of self-praise. It’s to foster your audience’s basic trust that you have the knowledge and character to talk about whatever it is you’re going to talk about.

2. Logos

OK, now your audience trusts you. What are you going to tell them? Logos is the content of your speech — the actual ideas you’re trying to get across and the way you link them together. And when it came to how to do this, Aristotle agreed with contemporary writing teachers: “Show, don’t tell.”

“Aristotle had a tip here: He found that the most effective use of logos is to encourage your audience to reach the conclusion to your argument on their own, just moments before your big reveal. They will relish in the fact that they were clever enough to figure it out, and the reveal will be that much more satisfying,” explains the Farnam Street blog.

By using evidence, anecdotes, and solid logic to lead your audience to the conclusions you want them to draw, you enlist them in your speech. That’s both more entertaining and more persuasive than just flat out telling them what they should think.

3. Pathos

So far, so logical. But as you may have observed, humans are not 100 percent logical creatures. Far from it. So according to Aristotle and other ancient Greek thinkers, a truly great speech must not just have a credible speaker making logically sound arguments. It must also have pathos, or emotion.

Offering statistics about your topic is one thing. Sharing a moving story about how your product or idea impacted an individual is an appeal to pathos. So is invoking the audience’s feelings of empathy, anger, frustration, or even patriotism or duty. You might even display a little well-timed emotion yourself.

The idea is to make your audience feel, not just think. But you don’t want to overdo it.

“In order to work, pathos needs to be used sparingly, where it has the strongest impact, and in a way that feels natural. If forced, pathos can have the opposite effect, making people distance themselves to avoid the awkwardness of your emotional outpouring,” warns neuroscientist and Ness Labs founder Anne-Laure Le Cunff in her own deep-dive post on the ancient Greek approach to persuasion.