Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/370

 344 Thus a cup bears the same relation to Bacchus as a shield to Mars. A shield, therefore, may be called the cup of Mars (Athen. x. p. 433 c), and a cup the shield of Bacchus. Again — evening being to day what old age is to life, the evening may be called the old age of the day, and old age, the evening of life; or, as Empedocles has expressed it, " Life's setting sun." It sometimes happens that there is no proper analogous term answering to the term horrowed, which yet may be used in the same manner as if there were. For instance — to sow is the term appro- priated to the action of dispersing seed upon the earth ; but the disper- sion of rays from the sun is expressed by no appropriated term ; it is, however, with respect to the surCs light what sowing is with respect to seed. Hence the poet's expression of the sun — (nreipuv deoKTiarav (pya. Sowing abroad His heaven-created flame. There is, also, another way of using this kind of meta23hor, by adding to the borrowed word a negation of some of those qualities which belong to it in its proper sense : as if, instead of calling a shield the cup of Mars, we should call it the wineless cup. An invented word is a word never before used by any one, but coined by the poet himself, for such it appears there are; as cpvir)/es, hougJis, for KepaTCL, horns; or dprjryp, an utter er of prayer, for ccpeus, a p>riest. A word is extended when for the proper vowel a longer is substi- tuted, or a syllable is inserted. A word is contracted when some part of it is retrenched. Thus ttoXt^os for TroXew?, and Jl-qXyjiah^oi for IlTyXctSov, are extended words : contracted, such as KpZ, and Sw, and oi/^ : e. g. [da yiperaL dfj.(poT^pct}v 6-^. An altered word is a word of which part remains in its usual state, and part is of the poet's making : as in Ae^LTepbv Kara /xa^ov, 8e^iT€/3os is for Sextos. r* * * * sn Cap. XXII. Tiie excellence of diction consists in being perspicuous, without being tion.^^ ^ mean. The most perspicuous is that which is composed of strictly ap- propriate words, but at the same time it is mean. Such is the poetry of Cleophon, and that of Stlienelus. That language, on the contrary, is ele- vated, and remote from the vulgar idiom, which employs unusual words : by unusual I mean foreign, metaphorical, extended — all, in short, that ^ Here again follows a grammatical scholium inserted in the text, which for our present purpose it is better to omit. — J. W. D.