Institutio Oratoria

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