Chapter 20: Gathering of Figures

And a gathering of figures, directed at making the same point, usually achieves a height of excitement—when two or three join in a partnership and contribute strength, persuasiveness, beauty—the kind of thing found in the speech against Midias, where the lack of connectives is woven together with anaphora and vivid typical description:

The assailant may do many things-some of which the victim may not be able to report to anyone else-by bearing, by look, by voice.

2. Next, so that the speech and writing may advance, not remain at a standstill (you see, quietude lies in standing still, but emotion in confused disorder, since emotion is an impulse and sympathetic excitement of the soul), he directly leaps to other asyndeta and epanaphoras:

… by bearing, by look, by voice, when he insults, when he is hostile, when he uses his knuckles, when he treats you like a slave.

Through these devices, the public speaker achieves an effect no different from that of a boxer: he stuns the perception of the judges with one blow after another. 3. Then, like a squall, he throws himself into another attack, saying:

… when he uses his knuckles, when he boxes his ears. These things excite, these things drive men beside them­ selves with rage, if they are unaccustomed to affrontery and mudslinging. No one reporting these things could present them with appropriate power.

So he everywhere guards the nature of epanaphora and asyndeton with continuous variation; thus his order becomes disorder and, furthermore, his disorder a sort of order.