the mind does not even examine this. [4] Of necessity, therefore, all style and enthymemes that give us rapid information are smart. This is the reason why superficial enthymemes, meaning those that are obvious to all and need no mental effort, and those which, when stated, are not understood, are not popular, but only those which are understood the moment they are stated, or those of which the meaning, although not clear at first, comes a little later; for from the latter a kind of knowledge results, from the former neither the one nor the other.3
[5] In regard to the meaning of what is said, then, such enthymemes are popular. As to style, popularity of form is due to antithetical statement; for instance, “accounting the peace that all shared to be a war against their private interests,”4 where “war” is opposed to “peace”; [6] as to words, they are popular if they contain metaphor, provided it be neither strange, for then it is difficult to take in at a glance, nor superficial, for then it does not impress the hearer; further, if they set things “before the eyes”; for we ought to see what is being done rather than what is going to be done. We ought therefore to aim at three things—metaphor, antithesis, actuality.
[7]
Of the four kinds of metaphor5
the most popular are those
based on proportion. Thus, Pericles said that the youth that had perished during
the war had disappeared from the State as if the year had lost its
springtime.6 Leptines,
speaking of the Lacedaemonians, said that he would not let the Athenians stand
by and see Greece deprived of one of
her eyes. When Chares was eager to have his accounts for the Olynthian war
examined, Cephisodotus indignantly exclaimed that, now he had the people by the
throat, he was trying to get his accounts examined7; on another occasion
also he exhorted the Athenians to set out for Euboea without delay “and provision themselves there,
like the decree of Miltiades.8” After the
Athenians had made peace with Epidaurus
and the maritime cities, Iphicrates indignantly declared “that they
had deprived themselves of provisions for the war.”9 Pitholaus called the Paralus10 “the bludgeon of
the people,” and Sestos
“the corn-chest11 of the Piraeus.” Pericles recommended that Aegina, “the eyesore of the
Piraeus,” should be
removed. Moerocles, mentioning a very “respectable” person
by name, declared that he was as much a scoundrel as himself; for whereas that
honest man played the scoundrel at 33 per cent. he himself was satisfied with 10
per cent.12 And the iambic of
Anaxandrides,13 on girls who were
slow to
marry, “
My daughters are “past the time” of marriage.
” And the saying of Polyeuctus14 upon a certain paralytic named
Speusippus, “that he could not keep quiet, although Fortune had bound
him in a five-holed pillory of disease.” Cephisodotus called the
triremes “parti-colored mills,”15 and
[Diogenes] the Cynic used to say that the taverns16 were “the messes” of
Attica. Aesion17 used to say
that they had “drained” the State into Sicily,18 which is a metaphor
and sets the thing before the eyes. His words “so that Greece uttered a cry” are also in a
manner a metaphor and a vivid one. And again, as Cephisodotus bade the Athenians
take care not to hold their “concourses” too often; and in
the same way Isocrates, who spoke of those “who rush
together” in the assemblies.19 And as
Lysias says in his Funeral Oration, that it was right that Greece should cut her hair at the tomb of
those who fell at Salamis, since her
freedom was buried along with their valor. If the speaker had said that it was
fitting that Greece should weep, her
valor being buried with them, it would have been a metaphor and a vivid one,
whereas
“freedom” by the side of “valor”
produces a kind of antithesis. And as Iphicrates said, “The path of my
words leads through the center of the deeds of Chares”; here the
metaphor is proportional and the words “through the center”
create vividness. Also, to say that one “calls upon dangers to help
against dangers” is a vivid metaphor. And Lycoleon on behalf of
Chabrias said, “not even reverencing the suppliant attitude of his
statue of bronze,”20 a metaphor for the moment, not for all time, but still
vivid; for when Chabrias is in danger, the statue intercedes for him, the
inanimate becomes animate, the memorial of what he has done for the State. And
“in every way studying poorness of spirit,”21 for “studying” a thing implies to
increase it.22 And that “reason
is a light that God has kindled in the soul,” for both the words
reason and light make something clear. “For we do not put an end to
wars, but put them off,”23 for both ideas refer to the
future—putting off and a peace of such a kind. And again, it is a
metaphor to say that such a treaty is “a trophy far more splendid than
those gained in war; for the latter are raised in memory of trifling advantages
and a single favor of fortune, but the former commemorates the end of the whole
war”;24
for both treaty and trophy are signs of victory. Again, that cities also
render
a heavy account to the censure of men; for
rendering an account25
is a sort of just punishment.
