3 - The Ideological Shape of Secular Singleness

Summary

In his Progymnasmata, the first-century rhetorician, Aelius Theon, observes that as an exercise of verbal inquiry, thesis is to be differentiated from topos. Theon explains that whereas topos is an amplification of some matter of agreement, thesis admits controversy, such as whether one should marry or whether one should have children.¹ Theon was not alone among rhetoricians of the Imperial period in using marriage to illustrate the bifurcated nature of rhetorical thesis.² The Ars rhetorica indicates that the thesis of the desirability of marriage was assigned to young students for writing more often than any other subject.³