soul), he at once dashes off in another direction, breaking up his words
again, and repeating them in a different form, “by gesture, by look, by
tone--when insult, when hatred, is added to violence, when he is struck
with the fist, when he is struck as a slave!” By such means the orator
imitates the action of Meidias, dealing blow upon blow on the minds of
his judges. Immediately after like a hurricane he makes a fresh attack:
“When he is struck with the fist, when he is struck in the face; this is
what moves, this is what maddens a man, unless he is inured to outrage;
no one could describe all this so as to bring home to his hearers its
bitterness.”[1] You see how he preserves, by continual variation, the
intrinsic force of these repetitions and broken clauses, so that his
order seems irregular, and conversely his irregularity acquires a
certain measure of order.

[Footnote 1: _Meid._ 72.]


XXI

Supposing we add the conjunctions, after the practice of Isocrates and
his school: “Moreover, I must not omit to mention that he who strikes a
blow may hurt in many ways, in the first place by gesture, in the second
place by look, in the third and last place by his tone.” If you compare
the words thus set down in logical sequence with the expressions of the
“Meidias,” you will see that the rapidity and rugged abruptness of
passion, when all is made regular by connecting links, will be smoothed
away, and the whole point and fire of the passage will at once
disappear.

2