The school of God does not recognize the laws of the encomium, but holds that a mere telling of the martyr’s deeds is a sufficient praise for the saints and sufficient inspiration for those who are struggling towards virtue. For it is the fixed habit of encomia to search out the history of the native city, to find out the family exploits, and to relate the education of the subject of the encomium, but it is our custom to pass over in silence such details and to compose the encomium of each martyr from those facts which have a bearing on his martyrdom. How could I be an object of more reverence or be more illustrious from the fact that my native city once upon a time endured great and heavy battles and after routing her enemies erected famous trophies? What if she is so happily located that in summer and winter her climate is pleasant? If she is the mother of heroes and is capable of supporting cattle, what gain are these to me? In her herds of horses she surpasses all lands under the sun. How may these facts improve us in manly virtue? If we talk about the peaks of mountains near, how they out-top the clouds and reach the farthest stretches of the air, shall we deceive ourselves into thinking that drawing praise from these facts we give praise to men? Of all things it is most absurd that when the just despise the whole world, we celebrate their praises from those things which they contemned.[52] Such composing upon a pattern is legitimately a school exercise. Its use in elementary education is not confined to sophistic. What is sophistic is its extent and its prescriptiveness, still more its extension from school into adult and professional practise. How far the oratory of the imperial centuries was controlled by fixed topics becomes startingly evident in its conformity to the rules set forth by the manuals of elementary exercises.[53] Theon’s of uncertain date may have been superseded[54] by that of Aphthonius in the fourth century, which at any rate had a long life.[55] But the pattern is most concisely shown in the second century by Hermogenes,[56] whose work is typical of them all. There some of the most characteristic habits of form in sophistic oratory are seen as prolongations of school exercises. THE ELEMENTARY EXERCISES (προγυμνάσματα) OF HERMOGENES[57] MYTH (FABLE) Myth is the approved thing to set first before the young, because it can lead their minds into better measures. Myths appear to have been used also by the ancients, Hesiod telling that of the nightingale, Archilochus that of the fox. From their inventors myths are named Cyprian or Libyan or Sybaritic; but all alike are called Æsopic, because Æsop used myths for his dialogues.