ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on ekphrasis which follow a standard pattern: the one-line definition is followed by a list of categories of subject matter and then, in accordance with Theon's advice to the teacher to select examples from literature, the authors go on to illustrate each category of ekphrasis by citing passages from classical texts. The language used to define ekphrasis clearly puzzled later readers of Aphthonios' version of the Progymnasmata. Sardianos explains patiently that periegematikos is to be taken metaphorically to mean relating and displaying everything about a subject. In the ancient and Byzantine schoolrooms, these written instructions must have been only a small aspect of the whole teaching of ekphrasis, or the other Progymnasmata. Read in isolation as disembodied fragments of doctrine, the Progymnasmata are less than illuminating. Their lack of practical recommendations is startling: it is difficult to see how one would arrive at anything approaching Aphthonios' model exercises on the basis of his precepts alone.
