Aelius Theon was an Alexandrian sophist and author of a collection of preliminary exercises (progymnasmata) for the training of orators. He probably lived and wrote in the mid to late first century A.D. and his treatise is the earliest treatment of these exercises. The work (extant, though incomplete), which probably formed an appendix to a manual of rhetoric, shows learning and taste, and contains valuable notices on the style and speeches of the masters of Attic oratory. Theon also wrote commentaries on Xenophon, Isocrates and Demosthenes, and treatises on style. He is to be distinguished from the Stoic Theon, who lived in the time of Augustus and also wrote on rhetoric. "Narrative is language descriptive of things that have happened or as if they had happened." Aelius Theon
References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
