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This introductory chapter provides a description of the origins, early life, and works of Himerius. He became a sophist, a master orator, and teacher of rhetoric in fourth century Athens, where he had studied rhetoric in his youth. At some point he received Athenian citizenship, and at a later date he was made an Areopagite. He married into a respected Athenian family, fathering a daughter; Athenian citizenship was a source of pride to him. The Himerian corpus that has survived is hardly in ideal condition. It does contain some orations preserved in full. In other cases, where a continuous chunk of text survives, it is not always easy to decide whether a whole oration (a short dialexis) is present or not. For many of the orations, only a series of discrete excerpts is preserved. Finally, there is some text, preserved in only one damaged manuscript that is the lacunose. Himerius comes to us partly in a direct tradition of his own, partly through excerptors and a lexicographer who culled material from his orations. Himerius's stories from Greek myth or history allow for numerous flattering comparisons of Himerius himself and his addressees to figures from the past. Almost all of Himerius's orations have a poetic tone to them.

This chapter presents the two orations by Himerius dealing with his son, Rufinus; these are Oration 7 which has survived only in a few excerpts and oration 8 which survives in full. In Oration 7, Himerius pleas before the Areopagus for the free status for his son, while in the second, Oration 8, Himerius laments at the premature death of Rufinus. Himerius praises his son's virtues and rhetorical skill, underscoring his precocity. When Rufinus was almost three years old and Himerius brought him before the Areopagites, the boy astounded them with his seriousness. Oration 8 is a monody which tells of hopes raised and then dashed to the ground, complaining against the divine powers and the injustice of fate. Himerius's loss was made especially bitter because he was not with his son during the latter's last days, death, and funeral. Oration 8 has a strong tragic coloration and is influenced by the master monodist, Aelius Aristides.

This chapter presents the orations that Himerius made when he was making his way to Constantinople after having been summoned by the emperor Julian. As he traveled northwards, he made stops at Thessalonica and Philippi before reaching Constantinople. In each of these cities, he delivered at least one public oration. These three surviving orations (Orations 39–41) are presented here, along with a much earlier oration (62), delivered in Constantinople. Himerius arrived in Constantinople some time during Julian's stay there, from December 11, 361, until the middle of June 362. Himerius's primary audience for Oration 41 was not the emperor (or a large number of Constantinopolitans), but his fellow Mithraic initiates. All four orations, being speeches of arrival of a sort, praise the cities in which they were delivered.

Two of the orations presented here, 34 and 35, concern the recruitment of new students. Oration 34 is addressed to the physician and comes Arcadius, who is considering enrolling his son in Himerius's school. Oration 34 courts Arcadius directly. Not all fathers of potential pupils would have been so courted and honored. But Arcadius was no ordinary father; he had been awarded the imperial title comes. Oration 35 is addressed to a group of disaffected students by other sophists. They have left other sophists and have transferred to Himerius's school. Himerius goes on to give the newly enrolled students a lecture on the importance of stylistic variety (Orations 68 and 74). Three pieces presented here, Orations 16, 65, and 66, are concerned with student disorders. The last parts of this chapter present the contents of five orations on a variety of themes (I3.I–5; 19; 22; 68; and 74).

Arrivals at and departures from Himerius's school in Athens were often occasions for oratory. There are enough examples of Himerian oratory associated with such occasions to warrant examining them here as a group. Four of the pieces (11, 30, 63, and 64) concern Himerius's own comings and goings. The meager remains of Oration 11 are from a “syntactic” or farewell talk that he delivered to his pupils at Athens when he was about to depart for a visit to Corinth. Himerius delivered Orations 30, 63, and 64 upon returning to Athens, 30 upon returning from Corinth—whether this was the same visit that Oration 11 refers to is not clear—and 63 upon returning from a visit to his original homeland, Bithynian Prusias. Oration 64 gives no indication of where he had returned from when he delivered it. In Oration 30 he appropriately stresses the sadness he felt abroad, as he yearned for those he had left behind in Athens.

The epithalamium for Severus, Oration 9, survives in full. Severus either was a continuing student in Himerius's school or had just completed his studies there shortly before his marriage. Oration 21 had been addressed to him as a newly arrived student, and Oration 24 shows that he went on to have a successful career in Roman government. Himerius organizes his epithalamium for Severus, as he tells us in his protheōria, in four parts: prooemium (9.3–6), the question of marriage (9.7–11), an encomium of the spouses (9.12–17), and a description of the bride (9.19–21). This chapter also discusses the different sections of an epithalamium, according to the works of Menander and Himerius.

This chapter presents one part of the ancient rhetorical curriculum which is the melet. It is a declamation—an imaginary deliberative or judicial oration in which the speaker impersonated a mythical, historical, or generic character. Meletai were complete, full-blown orations; the student advanced to them after working on the progymnasmata, preliminary exercises in various modes of discourse, which often can be found incorporated into appropriate sections of a full-blown oration. The sophist was expected to be a master of declamation. His meletai were models for his students to emulate, and there were also eager audiences for them outside of the schoolroom. Himerius's Orations 1–5 are presented in this chapter.

Almost half of the pieces presented here address and honor proconsular governors of Greece (Achaia), the province in which Himerius taught, while they were in office. Oration 20 is addressed to Musonius, who is an ex-proconsul of Greece in 362. The honorand of Oration 25 is Scylacius; he held some position in an imperial palace. Himerius addresses Oration 31 to Publius Ampelius, who is attested in office in 359–360. Oration 38 honors Cervonius, whose proconsulship has been conjecturally placed as early as the second half of Constantine's reign and as late as 353–354. Oration 48 honors the proconsul Hermogenes. In this oration some information about the governor's earlier career are given. This chapter also presents Orations 46 and 47, though the addressees of these two orations have been a source of debate.

This chapter presents the Himerian fragments, including one newly surfaced fragment added here as fragment 17. The fragments have been prefaced with the few remains of Oration 37, which could find no home in any of the previous chapters. Most of the very short fragments are from Lopadiotes' Lexicon (or the Lexicon Vindobonense), with the exception of fragment 2, which comes from the Homeric commentator Eustathius, the longer fragment 1, which is preserved in Photius, and fragment 3, from the Excerpta Neapolitana. Photius titles fragment 1 “From the Various Remaining Orations on Various Themes.” It consists of eight distinct sections or excerpts, which could be from as many as eight orations, although one cannot fail to suggest that sections 7 and 8 may be from one and the same propemptic oration. Section 6 is the single most interesting item in this chapter, as it contains an excerpt from an oration to the emperor Constantius, the Caesar Gallus, and Julian.

This chapter elucidates how the fabricated images of Demades helped to affirm the importance of paideia—as education and moral instruction—for the socially privileged position of the pepaideumenoi. The figure of Demades accentuated the ethical and professional rewards of paideia, and especially rhetorical education, in more than one way. He became an example of a persuasive orator who was always able to come up with a witty retort, quickly capture and deftly manage the attention of the audience, and speak effortlessly on the spur of the moment. Many more excerpts, however, employ Demades as a negative example: a poor commoner who lacked paideia and moral integrity, he was the opposite of the students whose education entitled them to membership in the intellectual, social, and political élite of the city. Although they seem to be mutually exclusive, these images served the same educational purpose and coexisted within the context of rhetorical schooling.

The relationship with the classical past, a core element of formal education in any period of Graeco-Roman civilization, is the topic of the final chapter. As the engagement with cultural achievements of the past was key to late antique schooling, reflection on education gave birth to a characteristic sense of temporality, an awareness of the very lateness of late antiquity. The chapter focuses on four writers who articulated this new consciousness: the rhetorical teacher Himerius, the preacher John Chrysostom, Augustine as a letter writer, and Cassiodorus as a monastic educationalist. These authors conceptualized educational practices as a vehicle for self-positioning vis-à-vis temporality. Learning, especially reading practices, was seen by them as correlating with historical consciousness. By this move, learning was reinterpreted as a historical and reconstructive enquiry: while engaging with works of previous centuries, learners were supposed to acquire a sense of temporality and determine their standpoint with regard to intellectual history. Studying the classics produced the times in which the classical authors were writing as a distinct period in time, different from the times in which the late antique readers lived. This handling of the past was characteristic of a postclassical mentality.