"And all the mountain felt the god."[10]
[Footnote 8: Aesch. _Lycurg._]
[Footnote 9: Lit. "Giving it a different flavour," as Arist. _Poet._
+hedusmeno logo choris hekasto ton eidon+, ii. 10.]
[Footnote 10: _Bacch._ 726.]
7
Sophocles has also shown himself a great master of the imagination in
the scene in which the dying Oedipus prepares himself for burial in the
midst of a tempest,[11] and where he tells how Achilles appeared to the
Greeks over his tomb just as they were putting out to sea on their
departure from Troy.[12] This last scene has also been delineated by
Simonides with a vividness which leaves him inferior to none. But it
would be an endless task to cite all possible examples.
[Footnote 11: _Oed. Col._ 1586.]
[Footnote 12: In his lost "Polyxena."]
8
To return, then,[13] in poetry, as I observed, a certain mythical
exaggeration is allowable, transcending altogether mere logical
credence. But the chief beauties of an oratorical image are its energy
and reality. Such digressions become offensive and monstrous when the
language is cast in a poetical and fabulous mould, and runs into all
sorts of impossibilities. Thus much may be learnt from the great orators
of our own day, when they tell us in tragic tones that they see the
Furies[14]--good people, can't they understand that when Orestes cries
out
"Off, off, I say! I know thee who thou art,
One of the fiends that haunt me: I feel thine arms
About me cast, to drag me down to hell,"[15]
these are the hallucinations of a madman?
[Footnote 13: Sec. 2.]
[Footnote 14: Comp. Petronius, _Satyricon_, ch. i. _passim_.]
[Footnote 15: _Orest._ 264.]
9
Wherein, then, lies the force of an oratorical image? Doubtless in
adding energy and passion in a hundred different ways to a speech; but
especially in this, that when it is mingled with the practical,
argumentative parts of an oration, it does not merely convince the
hearer, but enthralls him. Such is the effect of those words of
Demosthenes:[16] "Supposing, now, at this moment a cry of alarm were
heard outside the assize courts, and the news came that the prison was
broken open and the prisoners escaped, is there any man here who is such
a trifler that he would not run to the rescue at the top of his speed?
But suppose some one came forward with the information that they had
been set at liberty by the defendant, what then? Why, he would be
lynched on the spot!"
[Footnote 16: _c. Timocrat._ 208.]
10
Compare also the way in which Hyperides excused himself, when he was
proceeded against for bringing in a bill to liberate the slaves after
Chaeronea. "This measure," he said, "was not drawn up by any orator, but
by the battle of Chaeronea." This striking image, being thrown in by the
speaker in the midst of his proofs, enables him by one bold stroke to
carry all mere logical objection before him.
11
In all such cases our nature is drawn towards that which affects it most
powerfully: hence an image lures us away from an argument: judgment is
paralysed, matters of fact disappear from view, eclipsed by the superior
blaze. Nor is it surprising that we should be thus affected; for when
two forces are thus placed in juxtaposition, the stronger must always
absorb into itself the weaker.
12
On sublimity of thought, and the manner in which it arises from native
greatness of mind, from imitation, and from the employment of images,
this brief outline must suffice.[17]
[Footnote 17: He passes over chs. x. xi.]