Ecphrasis of actions will proceed from what went before, from what happened at the time, and from what followed. Thus if we make an ecphrasis on war, first we shall tell what happened before the war, the levy, the expenditures, the fears; then the engagements, the slaughter, the deaths; then the monument of victory; then the pæans of the victors and, of the others, the tears, the slavery. Ecphrases of places, seasons, or persons will draw also from narrative and from the beautiful, the useful, or their contraries. The virtues of the ecphrasis are clearness and visibility; for the style must through hearing operate to bring about seeing. But it is no less important that the expression correspond to the thing. If the thing be fresh, let the style be so too; if it be dry, let the style be similar. Note that some precisians do not make ecphrasis a (separate) exercise on the ground that it has been anticipated both in fable and in tale, in commonplace and in encomium; for in these too, they say, we expatiate descriptively on places, rivers, deeds, and persons. Nevertheless, since some (authors) of no small account have numbered this also among their exercises, we too have followed them, lest we be accused of negligence. THESIS The limits of the thesis are traditionally that the thesis is a discussion of a matter considered apart from every particular circumstance. For the thesis usually occupies the field of general debate, not referring to any assigned person, but simply taking a typical course of exposition, as of any person whatsoever, by consideration of such things only as are inherent in the subject matter. Thus when we analyze the advisability of marriage, we speak not with reference to such and such an one, as Pericles or Alcibiades, nor to one in such and such circumstances, time of life, or fortune; but subtracting all these, we shall consider simply the subject in itself, making our analysis of what is inherent in that, i.e., whether this should be done by anybody whatsoever because such and such are the results for those who do so; whereas if we take a definite person and circumstances, and thus make our exposition of reasons, it will be not a thesis, but an hypothesis. Some theses are political, some not. Political are such as fall within common considerations, e.g., the advisability of studying oratory, etc.; unpolitical are such as are peculiar to a certain field of knowledge and proper to those versed in it, e.g., whether the heavens are spherical, whether there are many worlds, whether the sun is a fire. These suit the philosophers; the others are the exercises of the rhetors. Some have called the latter practical, the former theoretical; for action underlies the former, whereas the goal of the latter is theory.