Chapter 23: Polyptota, Athroismoi, Variations, Climaxes

Figures called polyptota, athroismoi, variations, climaxes, which give one a sense of struggle, work together, as you understand, for ornamental effect and complete sublimity and emotion. And what of the changes of case, tense, person, number, gender—how they sometimes diversify and wake up the sentence! 2. But I say—concerning number—that these things are not only found to be ornamental which, while singular in form are, when theorized about, plural in force, as when the poet says:

At once an innumerable people
Were scattered along the seashore and shouted, “Look!
, . ,Tunny!”

But it is more worth keeping in mind that there are places where plurals used for singular strike us as more magniloquent and court our good opinion by the sense of a crowd of numbers. 3. Such are Oedipus’ lines in Sophocles:

0hweddings, weddings,
You are the ones, conceiving and begetting us,
Who again let loose the selfsame seed, and showed
Father, brothers, sons as kindred blood,
Brides, mother, wives—all deeds that are
Most shameful among mankind.

You see, all these are one word—“Oedipus,” and on the other side, “Jocasta”; but all the same, having been spilled into the plural, the number actually pluralizes the misfortunes. These also are made more in number:

Out came the Hectors and the Sarpedons

And the Platonic passage which we have cited in another place:

4. For no Pelopses or Cadmuses or Aegyptuses and Danauses nor any other of the many who are barbaric in nature dwell with us, but we ourselves, Greeks—nor a barbarian mixture—live here…

and the rest. of the passage consistent with this. By nature matters are heard as more ostentatious when the words are set one on another in herds. Still one ought not to do this except when the subject admits of exaggeration in the form of pluralizing, hyperbole, or emotion—either one or more of these—for to fasten bells everywhere is certainly too much like a sophist.