ABSTRACT
From the very first exercise in the progymnasmata sophists could expect to be trained in the art of telling stories as such, and some sophists at least would have made successful raconteurs in their own right. The prolaliae to sophistic performances frequently entail inserted stories for the purpose of relaxing the audience; and we hear that Hadrian of Tyre used marvellous accounts of the practices of magicians,1 to the extent of actually being mistaken for one. Lucian’s Philopseudes and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses would testify to a similar talent; and we have already seen how far the world of the progymnasmata is reflected in the extended narrative that begins Dio Chrysostom’s Euboicus. It is time to consider sophists as narrators in their own right.
