Rhetoric   

mislead his hearers. Synonyms are useful to the poet, by which I mean
words whose ordinary meaning is the same, e.g. 'porheueseai'
(advancing) and 'badizein' (proceeding); these two are ordinary words
and have the same meaning.
In the Art of Poetry, as we have already said, will be found
definitions of these kinds of words; a classification of Metaphors;
and mention of the fact that metaphor is of great value both in poetry
and in prose. Prose-writers must, however, pay specially careful
attention to metaphor, because their other resources are scantier than
those of poets. Metaphor, moreover, gives style clearness, charm, and
distinction as nothing else can: and it is not a thing whose use can
be taught by one man to another. Metaphors, like epithets, must be
fitting, which means that they must fairly correspond to the thing
signified: failing this, their inappropriateness will be conspicuous:
the want of harmony between two things is emphasized by their being
placed side by side. It is like having to ask ourselves what dress
will suit an old man; certainly not the crimson cloak that suits a
young man. And if you wish to pay a compliment, you must take your
metaphor from something better in the same line; if to disparage, from
something worse. To illustrate my meaning: since opposites are in the
same class, you do what I have suggested if you say that a man who
begs 'prays', and a man who prays 'begs'; for praying and begging are
both varieties of asking. So Iphicrates called Callias a 'mendicant
priest' instead of a 'torch-bearer', and Callias replied that
Iphicrates must be uninitiated or he would have called him not a
'mendicant priest' but a 'torch-bearer'. Both are religious titles,
but one is honourable and the other is not. Again, somebody calls
actors 'hangers-on of Dionysus', but they call themselves 'artists':
each of these terms is a metaphor, the one intended to throw dirt at
the actor, the other to dignify him. And pirates now call themselves
'purveyors'. We can thus call a crime a mistake, or a mistake a crime.
We can say that a thief 'took' a thing, or that he 'plundered' his
victim. An expression like that of Euripides' Telephus,
"King of the oar, on Mysia's coast he landed, "
is inappropriate; the word 'king' goes beyond the dignity of the
subject, and so the art is not concealed. A metaphor may be amiss
because the very syllables of the words conveying it fail to indicate
sweetness of vocal utterance. Thus Dionysius the Brazen in his elegies
calls poetry 'Calliope's screech'. Poetry and screeching are both, to
be sure, vocal utterances. But the metaphor is bad, because the sounds
of 'screeching', unlike those of poetry, are discordant and unmeaning.
Further, in using metaphors to give names to nameless things, we must
draw them not from remote but from kindred and similar things, so that
the kinship is clearly perceived as soon as the words are said. Thus
in the celebrated riddle
"I marked how a man glued bronze with fire to another man's body, "
the process is nameless; but both it and gluing are a kind of
application, and that is why the application of the cupping-glass is
here called a 'gluing'. Good riddles do, in general, provide us with
satisfactory metaphors: for metaphors imply riddles, and therefore a
good riddle can furnish a good metaphor. Further, the materials of
metaphors must be beautiful; and the beauty, like the ugliness, of all
words may, as Licymnius says, lie in their sound or in their meaning.
Further, there is a third consideration-one that upsets the fallacious
argument of the sophist Bryson, that there is no such thing as foul
language, because in whatever words you put a given thing your meaning
is the same. This is untrue. One term may describe a thing more truly
than another, may be more like it, and set it more intimately before
our eyes. Besides, two different words will represent a thing in two
different lights; so on this ground also one term must be held fairer
or fouler than another. For both of two terms will indicate what is
fair, or what is foul, but not simply their fairness or their
foulness, or if so, at any rate not in an equal degree. The materials
of metaphor must be beautiful to the ear, to the understanding, to the