Rhetoric

​Although there are four kinds of metaphors, those based on analogy are the most well received, as Pericles said that the youth who had perished in the war had vanished from the city in such a way as if someone were to take spring out of the year. And Leptines, concerning the Lacedaemonians, that they should not allow Greece to become one-eyed. And Cephisodotus, when Chares was eager to submit his accounts concerning the Olynthian war, was indignant, saying that he was trying to submit his accounts while squeezing the people into a chokehold. And once, when exhorting the Athenians to set out for Euboea after providing themselves with provisions, he said that they should march out with the decree of Miltiades. And Iphicrates, when the Athenians had made peace with Epidaurus and the coast, was indignant, saying that they had deprived themselves of the provisions for the war. And Peitholaus, who called the Paralus the ‘club of the people,’ and Sestos the corn-sieve of the Piraeus. And Pericles, who urged them to remove Aegina, ‘the eyesore of the Piraeus.’ And Moerocles, naming one of the respectable men, said that he himself was no more wicked than that man; for that man practiced wickedness at a rate of interest of one-third, whereas he himself did so at one-tenth. And the iambic verse of Anaxandrides concerning daughters who were long in getting married: ‘My maidens are past the due date of their marriage.’ And the saying of Polyeuctus against a certain Speusippus who was paralyzed, that he was unable to keep quiet, though bound by fortune in a five-holed pillory of disease. And Cephisodotus, who called triremes ‘painted mills,’ and the Dog, who called the Attic taverns the common messes; and Aesion, because they ‘poured out’ the city into Sicily; for this is a metaphor and brings things before the eyes. And ‘so that Greece cried aloud,’ and this too is in a way a metaphor and brings things before the eyes. And as Cephisodotus urged them to beware lest they make many ‘collisions.’ And Isocrates against those who rush together at the festival assemblies. And as in the Funeral Oration, because it was fitting for Greece to shear her hair at the tomb of those who died at Salamis, since their liberty was buried together with their courage; for if he had said that it was fitting to weep because their courage was buried with them, it would be a metaphor and before the eyes, but ’the liberty along with their courage’ contains a kind of antithesis. And as Iphicrates said, ‘for the path of my arguments lies through the midst of the deeds performed by Chares’; this is a metaphor by analogy, and ‘through the midst’ brings it before the eyes. And to say that one summons dangers to help against dangers is both before the eyes and a metaphor. And Lycoleon in defense of Chabrias: ‘not even feeling shame before his suppliant statue, his bronze image’; for it is a metaphor at the moment, though not always, and is before the eyes; for while he is in danger, his image supplicates—the inanimate indeed becoming animate—the memorial of the deeds of the city. And ‘practicing in every way to think small’; for to ‘practice’ is to increase something. And that ‘God kindled the intellect as a light in the soul’; for both make something clear. ‘For we do not dissolve wars, but postpone them’; for both are in the future, both the postponement and peace of that kind. And to say that the treaty is a trophy far more beautiful than those set up in wars; for the latter are for the sake of small things and a single stroke of fortune, but the former is for the whole war; for both are signs of victory. And that cities to the censure of men pay a heavy account; for an account is a kind of just penalty.