Kitap 8
3.72
The invention of similes has also provided an admirable means of illuminating our descriptions. Some of these are designed for insertion among our arguments to help our proof, while others are devised to make our pictures yet more vivid; it is with this latter class of simile that I am now specially concerned. The following are good examples:— Thence like fierce wolves beneath the cloud of night, Aen. ii. 355. or Like the bird that flies Around the shore and the fish-haunted reef, Skimming the deep. Aen. iv. 254.
3.73
In employing this form of ornament we must be especially careful that the subject chosen for our simile is neither obscure nor unfamiliar: for anything that is selected for the purpose of illuminating something else must itself be clearer than that which it is designed to illustrate. Therefore while we may permit poets to employ such similes as:— As when Apollo wintry Lycia leaves, And Xanthus' streams, or visits Delos' isle, His mother's home, Aen. iv. 143. it would be quite unsuitable for an orator to illustrate something quite plain by such obscure allusions.
3.74
But even the type of simile which I discussed in connexion with arguments xi. 22. is an ornament to oratory, and serves to make it sublime, rich, attractive or striking, as the case may be. For the more remote the simile is from the subject to which it is applied, the greater will be the impression of novelty and the unexpected which it produces.
