The exercise is still used in French schools, and for older pupils is carried, as by the ancients, into a sort of historical fiction. [9] Though the word seems to refer rather to the masters than to the pupils, the whole passage none the less clearly indicates the nature and scope of the exercise for students. The dramatic skill of a _declamator_ is described again in similar terms at X. i. 71; the use of _prosopopœia_ in the peroration of legal pleading, at VI. i. 25-27. [10] _Suasoriæ_ and _controversiæ_, Quintilian adds, should not be treated as essentially different. So far as _prosopopœia_ goes, they differ hardly at all; and otherwise they differ mainly in degree, _controversiæ_ being more difficult. Besides the consecutive discussion of _declamatio_ in chapter x of Book II, much of which is quoted above, Quintilian has many incidental references and allusions. At IV. ii. 29, he defines _declamatio_ as _forensium actionum meditatio_, “exercise in pleading”, and he implies the same definition in _ad declamandum ficta materia_ (I. x. 33) and in _fictas ad imitationem fori consiliorumque materias_ (i.e., _controversias suasoriasque_, II. iv. 41). Steadfastly ignoring its use as a form of public speaking, he consistently treats it as a school exercise. He implies that _declamatio_ embraced a large part of actual teaching when he complains (II. i. 8) that it is forecast by _grammaticus_, and calls _rhetor_ (II. i. 3) _declamandi magister_. He says repeatedly that it depends largely on imaginative realization of character and emotion (VI. i. 25-27; X. i. 71; and the passage on _prosopopœiæ_ quoted above). He admits the use of it as an exhibition of virtuosity (_in ostentationem_, II. x. 10), but satirizes this (II. xx. 3) by the anecdote commemorating the futile skill of a man who could throw grains through the eye of a needle. Though he regards it as a gymnastic profitable for mature speakers in providing variety and relief (X. v. 17), he has no patience with the common practise of keeping up indefinitely what is properly a school exercise (XII. xi. 15). Finally he repeats explicitly and implicitly his warning that _declamatio_ should be kept close to actuality; and in a long passage (V. xii. 17-22) concluding his discussion of the _sedes argumentorum_, he indignantly condemns its perversion into prettiness as an emasculation of oratory.