Libanius's Progymnasmata: Model Exercises in Greek Prose Composition and Rhetoric

This volume presents the original text and the first English translation of the largest surviving ancient collection of “preliminary exercises” used to teach young men how to compose their own prose, a crucial step toward public speaking and a career worthy of the educated elite. Graded in difficulty, the exercises range from simple fables and narratives to discussions of wise sayings, speeches of praise and blame, impersonations of figures from myth, descriptions of statues and paintings, ...