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WE HAVE now concluded two of the departments which this profession undertakes: the art of speaking correctly and the explanation of authors. They call the one methodicē and the other historicē. Let us add, however, to the business of the grammarian, some rudiments of the art of speaking, in which they may initiate their pupils who are still too young for the teacher of rhetoric. Let boys learn, then, to relate orally the
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fables of Aesop, which follow next after the nurse’s stories, in plain language, not rising at all above mediocrity, and afterward to express the same simplicity in writing. Let them learn, too, to take to pieces the verses of the poets, and then to express them in different words; and afterward to represent them, somewhat boldly, in a paraphrase, in which it is allowable to abbreviate or embellish certain parts, provided
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that the sense of the poet be preserved. He who shall success fully perform this exercise, which is difficult even for accomplished professors, will be able to learn anything.
Let sentences, also, and chriae and ethologies,1 be written by the learner, with the occasions of the sayings added according to the grammarians, because these depend upon reading. The nature of all these is similar, but their form different; because a sentence is a general proposition; ethology is confined
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to certain persons. Of chriae several sorts are specified: one similar to a sentence, which is introduced with a simple
statement, “He said,” or “He was accustomed to say”; another, which includes its subject in an answer: “He, being asked,” or, “When this remark was made to him, replied”; a third, not unlike the second, commences, “When some one
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had not said, but done, something.” Even in the acts of people some think that there is a chria, as, “Crates, having met with an ignorant boy, beat the boy’s tutor”; and there is another sort, almost like this, which, however, they do not venture to call by the same name, but term it a χρєιῶδєς; as, “Milo, having been accustomed to carry the same calf every day, ended by carrying a bull.” In all these forms the declension is conducted through the same cases, and a reason may be given as well for
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acts as for sayings. Stories told by the poets should, I think, be treated by boys, not with a view to eloquence, but for the purpose of increasing their knowledge. Other exercises of greater toil and ardor, which the Latin teachers of rhetoric have abandoned, have thus been rendered the necessary work of teachers of grammar. The Greek rhetoricians have better understood the weight and measure of their duties.
1 A sentence (sententia) or aphorism is a pithy enunciation of some general proposition, usually exhorting something or showing what something is. It is the root of the modern English “sententious,” meaning terse but weighty expression. There is no satisfactory English synonym for chria, which is the relation of some saying or action, showing its intention clearly, and usually having some moral instruction in view. Butler translated the term as “moral essay.” The ethologia is a description or illustration of the character or morals of a person (from the root word, ethos, referring to character).