This is the sketch which I conceive to be that of a plain orator, but still of a great one, and one of a genius very kindred to the Attic; since whatever is witty or pleasant in a speech is peculiar to the Attics.  Not, however, that all of them are facetious:  Lysias is said to be tolerably so, and Hyperides; Demades is so above all others.  Demosthenes is considered less so, though nothing appears to me to be more well-bred than he is; but he was not so much given to raillery as to facetiousness.  And the former is the quality of a more impetuous disposition; the latter betokens a more refined art.

XXVII.  There is another style more fertile, and somewhat more forcible than this simple style of which we have been speaking; but nevertheless tamer than the highest class of oratory, of which I shall speak immediately.  In this kind there is but little vigour, but there is the greatest possible quantity of sweetness; for it is fuller than the plain style, but more plain than that other which is highly ornamented and copious.

Every kind of ornament in speaking is suitable to this style; and in this kind of oratory there is a great deal of sweetness.  It is a style in which many men among the Greeks have been eminent; but Demetrius Phalereus, in my opinion, has surpassed all the rest; and while his oratory proceeds in calm and tranquil flow, it receives brilliancy from numerous metaphors and borrowed expressions, like stars.

I call them metaphors, as I often do, which, on account of their similarity to some other idea, are introduced into a speech for the sake of sweetness, or to supply a deficiency in a language.  By borrowed expressions I mean those in which, for the proper word, another is substituted which has the same sense, and which is derived from some subsequent fact.  And though this too is a metaphorical usage; still Ennius employed it in one manner when he said, “You are orphaning the citadel and the city;” and he would have used it in a different manner if he had used the word “citadel,” meaning “country.”  Again, when he says that “horrid Africa trembles with a terrible tumult,” he uses “Africa” for “Africans.”  The rhetoricians call this “hypallage,” because one word as it were is substituted for another.  The grammarians call it “metonymia,” because names are transferred.  But Aristotle classes them all under metaphor, and so he does the misuse of terms which they call [Greek:  katachraesis].  As when we call a mind “minute” instead of “little,” and misuse words which are near to others in sense; if there is any necessity for so doing, or any pleasure, or any particular becomingness in doing so.  When many metaphors succeed one another uninterruptedly the sort of oration becomes entirely changed.  Therefore the Greeks call it [Greek:  allaegoria], rightly as to name; but as to its class he speaks more accurately who calls all such usages metaphors.  Phalereus is particularly fond of these usages, and they are very agreeable; and although there is a great deal of metaphor in his speaking, yet there is no one who makes a more frequent use of the metonymia.