XXIV

On the other hand, the contraction of plurals into singulars sometimes
creates an appearance of great dignity; as in that phrase of
Demosthenes: “Thereupon all Peloponnesus was divided.”[1] There is
another in Herodotus: “When Phrynichus brought a drama on the stage
entitled _The Taking of Miletus_, the whole theatre fell a
weeping”--instead of “all the spectators.” This knitting together of a
number of scattered particulars into one whole gives them an aspect of
corporate life. And the beauty of both uses lies, I think, in their
betokening emotion, by giving a sudden change of complexion to the
circumstances,--whether a word which is strictly singular is
unexpectedly changed into a plural,--or whether a number of isolated
units are combined by the use of a single sonorous word under one head.

[Footnote 1: _De Cor._ 18.]


XXV

When past events are introduced as happening in present time the
narrative form is changed into a dramatic action. Such is that
description in Xenophon: “A man who has fallen, and is being trampled
under foot by Cyrus’s horse, strikes the belly of the animal with his
scimitar; the horse starts aside and unseats Cyrus, and he falls.”
Similarly in many passages of Thucydides.