of proper and commonly employed words, which either sound very well, or else are very explanatory of the subject; in words which do not naturally belong to the subject,—­it is either metaphorical, or borrowed from some other quarter; or else it is derived from the subject, whether it is a new term, or an old one grown obsolete; but even old and almost obsolete terms may be proper ones, only that we seldom employ them.  But words when well arranged have great ornament if they give any neatness, which does not remain if the words are altered while the sense remains.  For the embellishments of sentiments which remain, even if you alter the language in which they are expressed, are many, but still there are but few of them which are worth remarking.

Therefore a simple orator, provided he is elegant and not bold in the matter of making words, and modest in his metaphors, and sparing in his use of obsolete terms, and humble in the rest of his ornaments of words and sentences, will perhaps indulge in a tolerably frequent use of that kind of metaphor which is common in the ordinary conversation, not only of city people, but even of rustics; since they too are in the habit of saying, “that the vines sparkle with jewels,” “that the fields are thirsty,” “that the corn-fields are rejoicing,” “that the crops are luxuriant.”  Now there is not one of these expressions which is not somewhat bold; but the thing is either like that which you use metaphorically; or else, if it has no name of its own, the expression which you use appears to have been borrowed for the sake of teaching, not of jesting.  And this quiet sort of orator will use this ornament with rather more freedom than the rest; and yet he will not do it with as much licence as if he were practising the loftiest kind of oratory.

XXV.  Therefore that unbecomingness (and what that is may be understood from the definition we have given of what is becoming) is visible here also, when some sublime expression is used metaphorically, and is used in a lowly style of oration, though it might have been becoming in a different one.  But the neatness which I have spoken of, which illuminates the arrangement of language by these lights which the Greeks, as if they were some gestures of the speech, call [Greek:  schaemata], (and the same word is applied by them also to the embellishments of sentences,) is employed by the refined orator (whom some men call the Attic orator, and rightly too, if they did not mean that he was the only one) but sparingly.  For, as in the preparation of a feast, a man while on his guard against magnificence, is desirous to be thought not only economical but also elegant, he will choose what is best for him to use.  For there are many kinds of economy suited to this very orator of whom I am speaking; for the ornaments which I have previously been mentioning are to be avoided by this acute orator,—­I mean the comparing like with like, and the similarly sounding and equally measured ends of sentences, and graces hunted out as it were by the alteration of a letter; so that it may not be visible that neatness has been especially aimed at, and so that the orator may not be detected in having been hunting for means of pleasing the ears of his audience.