Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/42

 28 STRABO. BOOK I. a generality, of which poetry and prose are forms ? Yes, lan- guage is; but are not the rhetorical, the eloquent, and the florid styles also ? I answer, that flowery prose is nothing but an imitation of poetry. Ornatepoetry was the first to make its appearance, and was well received. Afterwards it ^vas closely imitated by writers in the time of Cadmus, Phere- cydes, and Hecatseus. The mejre was the only thing Dis- pensed with, every other poetic grace being carefully preserved. As time" advanced, one after another of its b^ajaties was discarded, till at last it camejiawn from its glory into our commoi^prose. In the same way we may say that conaedy took its rise from tragedy, but descended from its loft}? gran- deur into what we now call the common parlance of claily ^ e - And when [we find] the ancient writers making use of the expression " to sing," to designate eloquence of style, this in itself is an "eTtctence that poetry is the source and ojigin of all ornamented and rhetorical language. Poetry in an- cient days was on every occasion accompanied by melody. The song or ode was but^a modulated speecji,irom wheffceme words rhapsody, tragedy, comecfy, 1 are derived ; and since originally eloquence was the term made use of for the poetical effusions which were always of the nature of a song, it soon happened [that in speaking of poetry] some said, to sing, others, to be eloquent ; and as the one term was early misapplied to prose compositions, the other also was soon applied in the same way. Lastly, the very term ppose, which is applied to language not clothed in metre, seems to indicate, as it were, its descent from an elevation or chariot to the ground. 2 7. Homer accurately describes many distant countries, and not only Greece and the neighbouring places, as Eratosthenes asserts. His romance, too, is in better style than that of his suc- cessors. He does not make up wondrous tales on every occasion, 1 So much of the meaning of this sentence depends upon the orthogra- phy, that its force is not fully perceptible in English ; the Greek is as follows: TOVTO 8' f)v r} ySrj Aoyoc ^iijjiii(r}ikvoQ ' at])' ov dij pa^^Siav r' tXeyov teal TpayySiav Kai KWfKpdiav. 2 This last sentence can convey little or no meaning to the English reader ; its whole force in the original depending on verbal association. Its general scope however will be evident, when it is stated that in Greek, the same word, 7rtdc, which means a " foot-soldier," signifies also " arose composition." Hence Strabo's allusion to the chariot. The Latins borrowed the expression, and used sermo pedestris in the same sense.