t e c hni c a l r he t or i c 27

after Christ.

In Theons method of teaching a passage was read aloud

and students were rst required to listen and try to write it out from
memory; after gaining skill in doing this they were given a short passage
and asked to paraphrase it and to develop and amplify it, or seek to
refute it. Theon describes and gives examples of the treatment of ten
exercises: chria (or anecdote), fable (such as those attributed to Aesop),
narrative, commonplace (dealing with virtues or vices), ecphrasis (or
description of something), prosopopoeia (or speech in character), en-
comium, syncrisis (or comparison), thesis (rst refutation of a proposi-
tion, then arguing a proposition), and an argument supporting or op-
posing a law.
A short account of exercises in composition is attributed, probably
wrongly, to the second-century rhetorician Hermogenes of Tarsus and
was the basis of a Latin account, entitled praeexercitamina, by the gram-
marian Prisician, written about 500 a.d.

The most inuential of the

compositional handbooks was the work of Aphthonius, who was writ-
ing in the late fourth century.

His treatise was used throughout the

Byzantine period and was popular in the Renaissance, when it was
translated into Latin by Rudolph Agricola. There is also a treatment of
the subject by Nicolaus, dating from the fth century after Christ.
By at least the rst century b.c., virtually all Greek and Roman stu-
dents were practiced in progymnasmatic exercises in grammar or rhe-
torical schools. They learned a highly structured, approved way of nar-
rating, amplifying, describing, praising, criticizing, comparing, proving,
and refuting something. These skills could then be combined in dif-
ferent ways to compose a speech. The subjects for treatment were as-
signed by the teacher; free composition was not a feature of Greek and
Roman education. Progymnasmata are important for the study of Greek
and Latin literature of the Hellenistic and Roman periods in that the
exercises often supplied writers with structural units in their works and
with techniques of amplication. Among the best examples are the
Heroides by the Latin poet Ovid, which are versied prosopopoeia. Prac-
tice of encomium was particularly important, since epideictic oratory
became an important rhetorical genre in the imperial period and was
not treated in detail in most rhetorical handbooks.
Scholarly research and the writing of technical handbooks originated
in Greece. Cato the Elder, Varro, Celsus, and other Romans compiled