A similar absurdity is to be found in the declamation, to which I have already referred, in which a father poisons his son who insists on tearing his flesh with his teeth: The man who eats such flesh, deserves such drink. Or again, take this passage from the theme of the luxurious man who is alleged to have pretended to starve himself to death: Tie a noose for yourself: you have good reason to be angry with your throat. 'rake poison: it is fit that a luxurious man should die of drink!

Others are merely fatuous, such as the remark of the declaimer who urges the courtiers of Alexander to provide him with a tomb by burning down Babylon. I am burying Alexander. Shall any man watch such a burial from his housetop? As if this were the climax of indignities! Others fail from sheer extravagance. For example, I once heard a rhetorician who was declaiming about the Germans, say: I know not where they carry their heads, Is this a suggestion that the Germans are monsters whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders or that they are so tall that their heads are lost in the clouds? and again when belauding a hero, He beats back whole wars with the boss of his shield.

However, I shall never come to an end if I try to describe every possible form of this kind of absurdity. I will therefore turn to discuss a point of more importance. Rhetoricians are divided in opinion on this subject: some devote practically all their efforts to the elaboration of reflexions, while others condemn their employment altogether. I cannot agree entirely with either view.

If they are crowded too thick together, such reflexions merely stand in each other's way, just as in the case of crops and the fruits of trees lack of room to grow results in a stunted development. Again in pictures a definite outline is required to throw objects into relief, and consequently artists who include a number of objects in the same design separate them by intervals sufficient to prevent one casting a shadow on the other. Further,

this form of display breaks up our speeches into a number of detached sentences; every reflexion is isolated, and consequently a fresh start is necessary after each. This produces a discontinuous style, since our language is composed not of a system of limbs, but of a series of fragments: for your nicely rounded and polished phrases are incapable of cohesion. Further, the colour,

though bright enough, has no unity, but consists of a number of variegated splashes. A purple stripe appropriately applied lends brilliance to a dress, but a dress decorated with a quantity of patches can never be becoming to anybody.

Wherefore, although these ornaments may seem to stand out with a certain glitter of their own, they are rather to be compared to sparks flashing through the smoke than to the actual brilliance of flame: they are, in fact, invisible when the language is of uniform splendour, just as the stars are invisible in the light of day. And where eloquence seeks to secure elevation by frequent small efforts, it merely produces an uneven and broken surface which fails to win the admiration due to outstanding objects and lacks the charm that may be found in a smooth surface.

To this must be added the fact that those who devote themselves solely to the production of reflexions cannot avoid giving utterance to many that are trivial, flat or foolish. For their mere number will so embarrass their author that selection will be impossible. Consequently you will often find that such persons will produce a division or an argument as if it were an epigram, the only qualification necessary being that it should come toward the close of the period and be impressively delivered.

You killed your wife, though you were an adulterer yourself. I should loathe you even if you had only divorced her. Here we have a division. Do you wish me to prove that a love-philtre is a poison? The man would still be living, if he had not drunk it. This is an argument. There are, moreover, a number of speakers who not merely deliver many such epigrams, but utter everything as if it were an epigram.

Against these persons, on the other hand, must be set those who shun and dread all ornament of this kind, approving nothing that is not plain, humble and effortless, with the result that by their reluctance to climb for fear of falling they succeed merely in maintaining a perpetual flatness. What sin is there in a good epigram? Does it not help our case, or move the judge, or commend the speaker to his audience? It may be urged, perhaps,

that it is a form of ornament eschewed by the ancients. What do you mean by antiquity? If you go back to the earliest periods you will find that Demosthenes frequently employed methods that were known to none before him. How can we give our approval to Cicero, if we think that no change should be made from the methods of Cato and the Gracchi? And yet before the Gracchi and Cato the style of oratory was simpler still.

For my own part I regard these particular ornaments of oratory to be, as it were, the eyes of eloquence. On the other hand, I should not like to see the whole body full of eyes, for fear that it might cripple the functions of the other members, and, if I had no alternative, I should prefer the rudeness of ancient eloquence to the license of the moderns. But a middle course is open to us here no less than in the refinements of dress and mode of life, where there is a certain tasteful elegance that offends no one. Therefore let us as far as possible seek to increase the number of our virtues, although our first care must always be to keep ourselves free from vices, lest in seeking to make ourselves better than the ancients we succeed merely in making ourselves unlike them.

I will now proceed to the next subject for discussion, which is, as I have said, that of tropes, or modes, as the most distinguished Roman rhetoricians call them. Rules for their use are given by the teachers of literature as well. But I postponed the discussion of the subject when I was dealing with literary education, because it seemed to me that the theme would have greater importance if handled in connexion with the ornaments of oratory, and that it ought to be reserved for treatment on a larger scale.

By a trope is meant the artistic alteration of a word or phrase from its proper meaning to another. This is a subject which has given rise to interminable disputes among the teachers of literature, who have quarrelled no less violently with the philosophers than among themselves over the problem of the genera and species into which tropes may be divided, their number and their correct classification.

I propose to disregard such quibbles as in no wise concern the training of an orator, and to proceed to discuss those tropes which are most necessary and meet with most general acceptance, contenting myself merely with noting the fact that some tropes are employed to help out our meaning and others to adorn our style, that some arise from words used properly and others from words used metaphorically, and that the changes involved concern not merely individual words, but also our thoughts and the structure of our sentences.

In view of these facts I regard those writers as mistaken who have held that tropes necessarily involved the substitution of word for word. And I do not ignore the fact that as a rule the tropes employed to express our meaning involve ornament as well, though the converse is not the case, since there are some which are intended solely for the purpose of embellishment.

Let us begin, then, with the commonest and by far the most beautiful of tropes, namely, metaphor, the Greek term for our translatio. It is not merely so natural a turn of speech that it is often employed unconsciously or by uneducated persons, but it is in itself so attractive and elegant that however distinguished the language in which it is embedded it shines forth with a light that is all its own.

For if it be correctly and appropriately applied, it is quite impossible for its effect to be commonplace, mean or unpleasing. It adds to the copiousness of language by the interchange of words and by borrowing, and finally succeeds in accomplishing the supremely difficult task of providing a name for everything. A noun or a verb is transferred from the place to which it properly belongs to another where there is either no literal term or the transferred is better than the literal.

We do this either because it is necessary or to make our meaning clearer or, as I have already said, to produce a decorative effect. When it secures none of these results, our metaphor will be out of place. As an example of a necessary metaphor I may quote the following usages in vogue with peasants when they call a vinebud gemma, a gem (what other term is there which they could use?), or speak of the crops being thirsty or the fruit suffering. For the same reason we speak of a hard or rough man, there being no literal term for these temperaments.

On the other hand, when we say that a man is kindled to anger or on fire with greed or that he has fallen into error, we do so to enhance our meaning. For none of these things can be more literally described in its own words than in those which we import from elsewhere. But it is a purely ornamental metaphor when we speak of brilliance of style, splendour of birth, tempestuous public assemblies, thunderbolts of eloquence, to which I may add the phrase employed by Cicero Pro Mil. xiii. 34, 35. in his defence of Milo where he speaks of Clodius as the fountain, and in another place as the fertile field and material of his client's glory.