  This effort to stem the tide of cultural pauperization was carefully packaged and structured, without depriving the lecturer of the necessary amount of flexibility: each class (praxis) was divided into three sections. The reading of the original Platonic (or Aristotelian) text was followed by an ‘overview’ over the passage (theôria), which in turn segued into a closer reading (lexis). The overview allowed the professor to make all kinds of general remarks on the significance and meaning of the passage under discussion; the close reading presented more detailed and often simply philological, linguistic, logical, or rhetorical observations not unlike those found in our modern annotated editions. The procedure of dividing one’s comments into these two different sections seems to be a formalized development of Proclus’ work (see Beutler 1949, 226).