Such absurdities as, "Unless you carry your brains next to the ground in
your heels."[1] Hence it is necessary to know where to draw the line;
for if ever it is overstepped the effect of the hyperbole is spoilt,
being in such cases relaxed by overstraining, and producing the very
opposite to the effect desired.
[Footnote 1: Pseud. Dem. de Halon. 45.]
2
Isocrates, for instance, from an ambitious desire of lending everything
a strong rhetorical colouring, shows himself in quite a childish light.
Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian
state has surpassed that of Sparta in her services to Hellas, he starts
off at the very outset with these words: "Such is the power of language
that it can extenuate what is great, and lend greatness to what is
little, give freshness to what is antiquated, and describe what is
recent so that it seems to be of the past."[2] Come, Isocrates (it might
be asked), is it thus that you are going to tamper with the facts about
Sparta and Athens? This flourish about the power of language is like a
signal hung out to warn his audience not to believe him.
[Footnote 2: Paneg. 8.]
3
We may repeat here what we said about figures, and say that the
hyperbole is then most effective when it appears in disguise.[3] And
this effect is produced when a writer, impelled by strong feeling,
speaks in the accents of some tremendous crisis; as Thucydides does in
describing the massacre in Sicily. "The Syracusans," he says, "went down
after them, and slew those especially who were in the river, and the
water was at once defiled, yet still they went on drinking it, though
mingled with mud and gore, most of them even fighting for it."[4] The
drinking of mud and gore, and even the fighting for it, is made credible
by the awful horror of the scene described.
[Footnote 3: xvii. 1.]
[Footnote 4: Thuc. vii. 84.]
4
Similarly Herodotus on those who fell at Thermopylae: "Here as they
fought, those who still had them, with daggers, the rest with hands and
teeth, the barbarians buried them under their javelins."[5] That they
fought with the teeth against heavy-armed assailants, and that they were
buried with javelins, are perhaps hard sayings, but not incredible, for
the reasons already explained. We can see that these circumstances have
not been dragged in to produce a hyperbole, but that the hyperbole has
grown naturally out of the circumstances.
[Footnote 5: vii. 225.]
5
For, as I am never tired of explaining, in actions and passions verging
on frenzy there lies a kind of remission and palliation of any licence
of language. Hence some comic extravagances, however improbable, gain
credence by their humour, such as--
"He had a farm, a little farm, where space severely pinches;
'Twas smaller than the last despatch from Sparta by some inches."
6
For mirth is one of the passions, having its seat in pleasure. And
hyperboles may be employed either to increase or to lessen--since
exaggeration is common to both uses. Thus in extenuating an opponent's
argument we try to make it seem smaller than it is.