Emporius, or the Anatomy of an Author

The work of Emporius, in the form it has been transmitted to us, is the result of the stratification of two different sources, i.e. the Latin translation of a Greek textbook on progymnasmata and an advanced Latin rhetorical book. It implies the activity of four authors: a Greek rhetorician (5th Century AD?) who wrote a Greek textbook on progymnasmata [Emporius1]; a Latin rhetorician (6th AD?) who “translated” this textbook into Latin [Emporius2]; a Latin rhetorician who wrote a Latin textbook on rhetoric [Emporius3]; and a late-antique or early-medieval Latin compiler (7th-8th AD?) who selected, modified and combined materials coming from the latter two sources, shaping them into the actual form [Emporius4]. Three of those textual layers can reveal a good deal of information about the teaching of the preliminary exercises between Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages.