The Progymnasmata in Imperial Greek Education

The progymnasmata were graded prose compositional exercises, often begun under the grammarian and continued under the sophist or rhetor. They were preliminary to exercises in declamation. This paper examines their content and role in education in the Roman Empire. Considerable attention is paid to their discussion in theoretical treatises, almost entirely in Greek. Appreciation of these modes of discourse is important to the student of antiquity, not only because of their role in education, but also because they continued to surface in the writings of adults into whose heads they had been ingrained during their school days.