IX. I have now finished with two of the departments, with which teachers of literature profess to deal, namely the art of speaking correctly and the interpretation of authors; the former they call nethodicē, the latter historiē We must however add to their activities instruction in certain rudiments of oratory for the benefit of those who are not yet ripe for the schools of rhetoric.

Their pupils should learn to paraphrase Aesop's fables, the natural successors of the fairy stories of the nursery, in simple and restrained language and subsequently to set down this paraphrase in writing with the same simplicity of style: they should begin by analysing each verse, then give its meaning in different language, and finally proceed to a freer paraphrase in which they will be permitted now to abridge and now to embellish the original, so far as this may be done without losing the poet's meaning.

This is no easy task even for the expert instructor, and the pupil who handles it successfully will be capable of learning everything. He should also be set to write aphorisms, moral essays (chriae ) and delineations of character (ethologiae ), The meaning of ethologia is doubtful, but probably means a simple character-sketch of some famous man. of which the teacher will first give the general scheme, since such themes will be drawn from their reading. In all of these exercises the general idea is the same, but the form differs: aphorisms are general propositions, while ethologiae are concerned with persons

. Of moral essays there are various forms: some are akin to aphorisms and commence with a simple statement he said or he used to say : others give the answer to a question and begin on being asked or in answer to this he replied, while a third and not dissimilar type begins, when someone has said or done something. Some hold that a moral essay may take some action as its text;

take for example the statement Crates on seeing an ill-educated boy, beat his paedagogus, or a very similar example which they do not venture actually to propose as a theme for a moral essay, but content themselves with saying that it is of the nature of such a theme, namely Milo, having accustomed himself to carrying a calf every day, ended by carrying it when grown to a bull. All these instances are couched in the same grammatical form The sense is not clear: it appears to refer to the stereotyped form in which the chria was couched. and deeds no less than sayings may be presented for treatment.

Short stories from the poets should in my opinion be handled not with a view to style but as a means of increasing knowledge. Other more serious and ambitious tasks have been also imposed on teachers of literature by the fact that Latin rhetoricians will have nothing to do with them: Greek rhetoricians have a better comprehension of the extent and nature of the tasks placed on their shoulders.