Chapter 24: Singular for Plural

But in fact the opposite device, driving plurals together into singulars, is also sometimes most sublime in appearance. Demosthenes says:

Then the whole Peloponnesus stood apart.
And really, while Phrynichus put in his drama The Capture of Miletus, the theatre burst into tears.

Compressing the number from what is divided to what is unified gives more the sense of a single body. 2. What is responsible for the ornamental effect I take to be the same in both: where the words are essentially singular, to pluralize them stirs the emotions contrary to expectation. But where the words are plural, making the plural come together into a sonorous unity is, because of the transformation of things into their opposite, contrary to calculation.