Aphthonius adopts the same divisions of Progymnasmata, save that he makes them fourteen instead of twelve, by [Sidenote: _Aphthonius._] separating ἀνασκευὴ [rebutting] from κατασκευὴ [confirming], and adding a section on Blame. His object was evidently to make even the business-like handling of his predecessor more precise still; and the long and revived popularity which, as has been said, he achieved, was not an undue reward for one of the most craftsmanlike crambooks that ever deserved the encomium of the epithet and the discredit of the noun. Aphthonius substitutes for the simple heading “Of Myth,” &c., “_Definition_ of Myth,” &c.; and though he still keeps his sections very short, he manages, instead of the rather brachygraphic indication of examples in the text, to give an appendix of complete if miniature pattern at the end of each section—a fable of the ants and grasshoppers, urging youth to industry, for the first; the story of the rose and its acquiring redness from the blood of Aphrodite when she struck her foot against its thorns in trying to shield Adonis from Ares, for the second; and so on. In every respect, Aphthonius has studied clearness, and he has certainly achieved it. If it were not for the dangers of the whole method, and especially that greatest one, of encouraging the mistake of classification for fact, terms for things, orderly reference to a schedule for æsthetic appreciation, he would deserve very hearty applause. And even as it is, one could, as has been said above, see the study which he facilitates substituted for any one of at least a dozen subjects of our modern overcrowded curriculum with a great deal of equanimity. Short as the piece is, some of the examples, such as the encomia of Thucydides and of Wisdom, are compositions of considerable finish. But it is significant that in the first there is, strictly speaking, no literary criticism at all, and that even the inevitable comparison with Herodotus is poorly shuffled off with the stock reproach that Herodotus writes to please, Thucydides to speak the truth.