Library › Greek: Oratory & Rhetoric › Philopolis: Argument (Theoria) of Oration 4
Philopolis is a brief prefatory argument (theoria) transmitted among the works of Themistius (c. 317–c. 388), the philosopher and orator of Constantinople. In about a hundred and thirty words it summarises a speech in which the orator excuses his absence from a festival to which the emperor had invited him and then praises the emperor, including his renewal of the city's public books. Its content matches Themistius' fourth oration, addressed to Constantius II.
Such summaries were attached to speeches to tell readers what the orator set out to do and how. This one frames the speech as the work of a political philosopher whose aim is the good of the city, a claim central to Themistius' self-image, and it singles out the copying of old books for Constantinople's library as an achievement worthy of an emperor.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions. Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).