Evidently the _declamatio_ that Quintilian recommends is not the _declamatio_ that he heard about him. He wishes to recall to its original purpose what was already out of hand. Originally, he implies, it defined that general practise in debating which must have been as common in the ancient teaching as in modern universities. But already, as he also admits by implication, it had become quite different. Already it was established both as a special exercise and as a special form of public speaking. With the narrowing of the field of public discussion, the large old rhetoric surveyed by Quintilian had been narrowed more and more toward an artificial combination of forensic ingenuity with dramatic imagination. Instead of training youth to lead in public policy and to secure justice for individuals, _declamatio_ had become an end in itself, the rhetor’s own kind of oratory. As an exhibition of skill it was his easiest means of winning pupils, and of holding them by letting them exhibit themselves. The inherent vice of artificiality, which Quintilian admits by implication, he nevertheless assigns entirely to perverted educational practise. He would recall _declamatio_ from invention to actuality, and from display to exercise. That his warning was already too late is evident from Seneca (see section II of this chapter). Meantime one of the chief opportunities for perversion will be found in the _prosopopœiæ_ described next. The pervasive classical inculcation of appropriateness (see also XI. i) was carried into _declamatio_ through specific exercises known generally as _prosopopœiæ_ (προσωποποιίαι). Their idea was an imaginative entering into the character, the emotional as well as the intellectual habit, of the person for whom one was speaking (_fictæ alienarum personarum orationes_, VI. i. 25). In more elementary form, sometimes called _ethopœiæ_ (ἠθοποιίαι) they bade the student say what Priam must have said to Achilles, or Sulla on renouncing the dictatorship, or some other character of history or fiction on a critical occasion; and they began even with the boy’s amplification of fables and myths.[8] As applied to _declamatio_ (_suasoriæ_ and _controversiæ_) they are thus described by Quintilian: