The Progymnasmata as Practice

The Greek progymnasmata handbooks show a remarkable degree of uniformity in the content, definition and order of the exercises. This chapter looks at the system as a whole and how it served as a prelude to the more advanced stages of rhetoric, even if for many this would have been an unattainable ideal. The function of the earlier exercises in particular as a bridge between the teaching of grammar and of rhetoric is evident in the grammatical components of chreia and the two narrative exercises, mythos and diegema . In Theon's conception of the exercises, each exercise could give rise to a variety of activities of differing levels of complexity. The exercises of thesis and koinos topos introduced students to the telika kephalaia , the heads of purpose, or criteria for action which were key to deliberative oratory. Keywords: diegema ; Greek progymnasmata handbooks; koinos topos ; mythos ; Theon's system