Rhetoric   

words for writers of epic poetry, which is a proud and stately affair;
and metaphor for iambic verse, the metre which (as has been already'
said) is widely used to-day.
(4) There remains the fourth region in which bad taste may be shown,
metaphor. Metaphors like other things may be inappropriate. Some are
so because they are ridiculous; they are indeed used by comic as well
as tragic poets. Others are too grand and theatrical; and these, if
they are far-fetched, may also be obscure. For instance, Gorgias talks
of 'events that are green and full of sap', and says 'foul was the
deed you sowed and evil the harvest you reaped'. That is too much like
poetry. Alcidamas, again, called philosophy 'a fortress that threatens
the power of law', and the Odyssey 'a goodly looking-glass of human
life',' talked about 'offering no such toy to poetry': all these
expressions fail, for the reasons given, to carry the hearer with
them. The address of Gorgias to the swallow, when she had let her
droppings fall on him as she flew overhead, is in the best tragic
manner. He said, 'Nay, shame, O Philomela'. Considering her as a bird,
you could not call her act shameful; considering her as a girl, you
could; and so it was a good gibe to address her as what she was once
and not as what she is.
Part 4
The Simile also is a metaphor; the difference is but slight. When the
poet says of Achilles that he
"Leapt on the foe as a lion, "
this is a simile; when he says of him 'the lion leapt', it is a
metaphor-here, since both are courageous, he has transferred to
Achilles the name of 'lion'. Similes are useful in prose as well as in
verse; but not often, since they are of the nature of poetry. They are
to be employed just as metaphors are employed, since they are really
the same thing except for the difference mentioned.
The following are examples of similes. Androtion said of Idrieus that
he was like a terrier let off the chain, that flies at you and bites
you-Idrieus too was savage now that he was let out of his chains.
Theodamas compared Archidamus to an Euxenus who could not do
geometry-a proportional simile, implying that Euxenus is an Archidamus
who can do geometry. In Plato's Republic those who strip the dead are
compared to curs which bite the stones thrown at them but do not touch
the thrower, and there is the simile about the Athenian people, who
are compared to a ship's captain who is strong but a little deaf; and
the one about poets' verses, which are likened to persons who lack
beauty but possess youthful freshness-when the freshness has faded the
charm perishes, and so with verses when broken up into prose. Pericles
compared the Samians to children who take their pap but go on crying;
and the Boeotians to holm-oaks, because they were ruining one another
by civil wars just as one oak causes another oak's fall. Demosthenes
said that the Athenian people were like sea-sick men on board ship.
Again, Demosthenes compared the political orators to nurses who
swallow the bit of food themselves and then smear the children's lips
with the spittle. Antisthenes compared the lean Cephisodotus to
frankincense, because it was his consumption that gave one pleasure.
All these ideas may be expressed either as similes or as metaphors;
those which succeed as metaphors will obviously do well also as
similes, and similes, with the explanation omitted, will appear as
metaphors. But the proportional metaphor must always apply
reciprocally to either of its co-ordinate terms. For instance, if a
drinking-bowl is the shield of Dionysus, a shield may fittingly be
called the drinking-bowl of Ares.
Part 5
Such, then, are the ingredients of which speech is composed. The
foundation of good style is correctness of language, which falls under
five heads. (1) First, the proper use of connecting words, and the
arrangement of them in the natural sequence which some of them
require. For instance, the connective 'men' (e.g. ego men) requires
the correlative de (e.g. o de). The answering word must be brought in