135. Διὰ μέν ἂρ’ ζωστῆρος ἐλήλατο δαιδαλέοιο,
136. Καὶ διὰ θωρηκος πολυδαιδάλου ἠρήρειστο,
than even by the words themselves. You see it discharged, flying through the air, and piercing the belt of Menelaus.
The description of the Myrmidons in battle-array, Iliad Π. v. 215.
Ἀσπὶς ἄρ’ ἀσπίδ’ ἔρειδε, κόρυς κόρυν ἀνέρα δ’ ἀνήρ.
is of the same kind, and has never been hit by any imitation: what beauties in one line!
Plato’s periods were, from their harmony, compared[129] to a noiseless smooth-running stream. But we should be mistaken in confining the tongue to the softer harmonies only: it became a roaring torrent, boisterous as the winds by which Ulysses’ sails were torn, split only in three or four places by the words, but rent by the sound into a thousand tatters[130]. This was the “vivida expressio,” the living sound; supremely beautiful, when properly and sparingly used!
How quick, how refined must the organs have been, which were the depositaries of such a tongue! The Roman itself could not attain its excellence: nay, a Greek father, of the second century of the christian æra[131], complains of the horrid sound of the Roman laws.
Nature keeps proportion; consequently the frame of the Greeks was of a fine clay, of nerves, and muscles most sensibly elastic, and promoting the flexibility of the body: hence that easiness, that pliant facility, accompanied with mirth and vigour, which animated all their actions. Imagine bodies most nicely balanced between leanness and corpulency: both extremes were ridiculed by the Greeks, and their poets sneer at the Philesiases[132], Philetases[133], and Agoracrituses[134].