The Progymnasmata

The word progymnasmata is Greek for "preliminary exercises."

These exercises were taught in ancient Greece and Rome to educate young men in rhetoric, in effective and persuasive public speaking and writing.

First, students would master the fourteen progymnasmata by analyzing and imitating the great speeches and literature of that day. Later, they would use this knowledge to write their own compositions. Finally, they would use these skills in the public arena in politics and in court.

Training in virtue was part of this process. The content of the students’ writing and speeches was just as important as the style and persuasive skills they displayed.

These rhetorical skills are just as crucial for modern students as they were for ancient students. Virtuous, clear, and persuasive communication is critical to any civilization. Classical Writing seeks to train students in each of these areas.

The fourteen writing exercises of the progymnasmata provide the core around which Classical Writing is organized. Within this structure, students learn to competently use proper grammatical construction and figures of speech, to arrange their ideas and arguments in a logical and clear way, and to present their thoughts in the manner best suited to their audience and the purpose of the occasion.

Classical Writing covers thirteen of the fourteen progymnasmata. The table below lists each of the fourteen progymnasmata with a short definition and the Classical Writing text which covers it.

Progymnasmata	Definition	Covered in:
Fable	retell a fable	Aesop
Narrative	retell a short story	Homer
Maxim	amplify a saying	Diogenes: Maxim
Chreia	amplify an anecdote about a wise person	Diogenes: Chreia
Refutation	argue against a particular version of a narrative story	Herodotus
Confirmation	argue for a particular version of a story
Commonplace	elaborate on, praise, or blame a certain type of person, or a certain virtue or vice
Encomium	praise a person	Plutarch
Invective	blame a person
Comparison	compare a given subject with another subject
Description	describe an event or place vividly	Shakespeare
Characterization	invent a monologue which a person might have made on a specific occasion
Thesis	inquire into a debatable question that argues a general point	Demosthenes
Law	argue for or against a legislative proposal in general terms

 

The progymnasmata prevent much of the frustration and writer’s block which is so common in students taught by modern, unstructured, "creative" methods. The progymnasmata teach writing carefully and systematically, all the while prompting the student to deal with challenging thoughts.

The progymnasmata begin, for all students, with the simple retelling of fables and short narrative stories. From there, the student gradually moves on to exercises in simple exposition and persuasion. Each exercise features a fixed outline and carefully specified subject matter. The more advanced exercises of the progymnasmata combine elements of the earlier exercises to create increasingly complex, effective compositions. By the time students have reached the advanced progymnasmata, they have developed good writing habits, have learned a variety of techniques, persuasive, expository, and creative, and are able to compose original work.

The progymnasmata consist of wisely crafted outlines as an aid to invention (developing content) and arrangement (organizing the content) and style. The progymnasma they choose for a project provides a fixed outline and helps them to consider his subject from every possible angle: virtue, morality, expediency, legality, personal circumstances, physical possibilities, motivational probabilities, and so forth. When the students are done writing a progymnasma, they have gone through a comprehensive survey of ideas to exhaustively examine the subject at hand. If you wish learn more about the classical progymnasmata, here are some resources to get you started:

The progymnasmata from Leeds University

Apthonius' Progymnasmata

Silva Rhetoricae
(scroll to "Progymnasmata" on left)