His first volume is composed of divers more or less original treatises, which are of the kind called προγυμνάσματα, “Preliminary Exercises,” and which in most cases actually bear that title. The first is by the famous Hermogenes (_ob._ _c._ 170 A.D.), the Phœnix of rhetoricians pure and simple, who became a master at fifteen and an idiot at five-and-twenty, whose “heart was covered with hair,” and whose works not only followed him, but were followed by libraries-full of scholiasts and commentators. The next, itself a sort of adaptation of Hermogenes, is by Aphthonius of Antioch, a teacher of the beginning of the fourth century A.D., who had the rather curious good fortune not merely to secure a long vogue in the late classical ages, but to be current in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Theon, an Alexandrian, but not the father of Hypatia, follows, with the less-known names of Nicolas, Nicephorus, Adrian, Severus, and the better known George Pachymeres, as well as another collection by an anonym. Of these, the works attributed to Adrian and Severus are not called προγυμνάσματα, but in the first case μελέται, in the second διηγήματα καὶ ἠθοποΐαι.[129] The most famous and popular of the sets, those of Hermogenes and Aphthonius, are very short, and, like that of Georgius Pachymeres, do not exceed fifty pages. The others are longer, and in the case of the work of Nicolas, some three times as long. Footnote 129: _Meletæ_ are properly “complete declamations,” not, as are the _Progymnasmata_, exercises in _parts_ of oratory, The others are some of these parts only. The opening of the Progymnasmata of Hermogenes is a curious and slightly bewildering mixture of definition, literary [Sidenote: _The_ Progymnasmata _of Hermogenes_.] history, and the kind of “Manual for Young Writers” (_lege_ orators), which, after long disuse, has recently begun to be prepared for the aspiring journalist. The first chapter is on Fables. They are supposed to be good things for the young. They have various authors and titles, but there is a tendency to give the name of Æsop to all of them. They are not true to fact; but should be plausible, and can be made so by suiting the action to the characters and making the peacock stand for beauty and vanity, the fox for wisdom, the ape for mimicry. Sometimes you should give them shortly, sometimes spin them out. (Example given.) You may put them in different places of your speech, and they will do instead of an actual example.