But the question arises, what rhythm is to be employed; either absolutely, or in preference to others.  But that every kind of rhythm is at times suitable to oratory, may be seen from this,—­that in speaking we often make a verse without intending it, (which, however, is a great fault, but we do not notice it, nor do we hear what we say ourselves;) and as for iambics, whether regular or Hipponactean, those we can scarcely avoid, for our common conversation often consists of iambics.  But still the hearer easily recognises those verses, for they are the most usual ones.  But at times we unintentionally let fall others which are less usual, but which still are verses; and that is a faulty style of oratory, and one which requires to be guarded against with great care.

Hieronymus, a Peripatetic of the highest character, out of all the numerous compositions of Isocrates, picked out about thirty verses, chiefly iambics, but some also anapaests.  And what can be worse?  Though in picking them out he acted in an unfair manner, for he took away sometimes the first syllable in the first word of a sentence; and again, he sometimes added to the last word the first syllable of the following sentence.  And in this way he made that sort of anapaest which is called the Aristophanic anapaest.  And such accidents as these cannot be guarded against, nor do they signify.  But still this critic, in the very passage in which he finds this fault with him, (as I noticed when I was examining his work very closely,) himself makes an iambic without knowing it.  This, then, may be considered as an established point, that there is rhythm also in prose, and that oratorical is the same as the poetical rhythm.

LVII.  It remains, therefore, for us to consider what rhythm occurs most naturally in a well-arranged oration.  For some people think that it is the iambic rhythm, because that is the most like a speech, on which account it happens that it is most frequently employed in fables, because of its resemblance to reality—­because the dactylic hexameter rhythm is better suited to a lofty and magniloquent subject But Ephorus himself, an inconsiderable orator, though coming from an excellent school, inclines to the paeon, or dactyl, but avoids the spondee and trochee.  For because the paeon has three short syllables and the dactyl two, he thinks that the words come more trippingly off on account of the shortness and rapidity of utterance of the syllables; and that a contrary effect is produced by the spondee and trochee, because the one consists of long syllables and the other of short ones; so that a speech made up of the one is too much hurried, it made up of the other is too slow; and neither is well, regulated.  But those accents are all in the wrong, and Ephorus is wholly in fault.  For those who pass over the paeon, do not perceive that a most delicate, and at the same time most dignified rhythm is passed over by them.  But Aristotle’s opinion is very different, for he considers that the