Theon’s handling of the Progymnasmata (which he often speaks of without the _pro_) is, as has been said, much fuller than those of Hermogenes and Aphthonius. He does not, like the latter of these, give a regular formal pattern of each kind; but he has a great many illustrative references to literature, and he has a good deal of discussion on what may be called the philosophy of the several kinds. Nor is it unnoteworthy that in dealing with Commonplace he drops the “common,” substitutes _prosopopœia_ for _ethopœia_, and introduces the curious new heading of “Law.” On the whole, Theon is more “for thoughts” than either of his forerunners;[135] he might profit a clever boy more, and he has much more numerous and deeper glimmerings of insight into the purely critical side of the matter. But he lacks system, and this, in dealing with a subject which is systematic or nothing, is a drawback. Footnote 135: Speaking of Walz’s order: I have little doubt myself that he preceded Aphthonius in time. There was a rhetorical Nicolaus (indeed the name was very common) who was a student of Proclus; but the author of the [Sidenote: _Nicolaus._] _Progymnasmata_ we possess seems to have flourished later, under the Emperor Leo and after him. For some reason or none, MSS. of him seem to be specially found at Oxford. They are merely examples, several of each kind, and sometimes minutely subdivided, there being, for instance, separate patterns of mixed, unmixed, logical, and practical “Use.” They form, in fact, a curious bundle, and by no means a very small one, of partial declamations in common form, the examples of _Ethopœia_ being especially remarkable: “What sort of things Niobe would say,” “What Menœceus the patriotic suicide,” “What Cassandra at the sight of the horse,” &c. No less than fourteen in all are given. This is also the principle of the _Progymnasmata_ of Nicephorus Basilicus, a notary (not the son-in-law chronicled by [Sidenote: _Nicephorus._] Scott) of Alexius Comnenus, who gives no less than three-and-twenty Ethopœiæ on subjects Pagan and Christian. In fact, these two collections, which together fill some two hundred and fifty well-packed pages, may be regarded rather as rhetorical reading-books, designedly intended to possess a certain interest, than as anything else. Familiarity with them would be likely to produce much the same sort of literary facility, and in a sense “correctness,” as that which we find in the minor French writers of the eighteenth century. It could, after mere childhood (when it might insensibly inculcate some good principles and some sound models), have little other good effect.