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‘Similes too, as has been already said in the preceding (chapter, c. 4), are always in a certain sense popular metaphors. For they are always composed of (or, expressed in) two terms, just like the proportional metaphor; as for instance, the shield, we say, is Ares' goblet’, (the shape of the φιάλη is in reality more like an elongated saucer, or shield— whence the comparison), ‘and a bow a stringless harp. When thus expressed, the phrase is not single (or simple; it has both terms expressed, the two terms viz. that are brought into comparison; and is therefore a simile); whereas to call the bow a harp or the shield a goblet is single’ (and therefore only a metaphor). [ἀεὶ εὐδοκιμοῦσαι. “in ἀεὶ fortasse latet αἱ.” Spengel.] The meaning seems to be this. The difference between a simile and a metaphor is—besides the greater detail of the former, the simile being a metaphor writ large—that it always distinctly expresses the two terms that are compared, bringing them into apparent contrast: the metaphor on the other hand, substituting by transfer the one notion for the other of the two compared, identifies them as it were in one image, and expresses both in a single word, leaving the comparison between the object illustrated, and the analogous notion which throws a new light upon it, to suggest itself from the manifest correspondence to the hearer. On the φιάλη Ἄρεος, see note on III 4.4, and Introd. pp. 220—292, there referred to. This was due to Timotheus the dithyrambic poet. The φόρμιγξ ἄχορδος for τόξον—the point of resemblance which brings the two together seems to be the common twang of the bowstring and harp-string produced in each case by the vibration of the string. The bow may therefore be called a stringless harp, as wanting the many strings of the musical instrument, or, in other words, an unmusical harp. On these privative epithets with metaphors, comp. III 6.7. The author of this last bit of ἀστειότης is a tragic poet named Theognis, mentioned with contempt and ridicule three times by Aristophanes, Acharn. 11, and 138, and Thesm. 168. He is said to have received the nickname of χιών from his excessive ψυχρότης. Of all his writings only this one phrase has survived, preserved by Demetrius, π. ἑρμηνείας, π. μεταφορᾶς, § 85. He gives the author's name, and cites this as a specimen of a κινδυνώδης μεταφορά, ὡς ὁ Θέογνις παρατίθεται το (τόξον) φόρμιγγα ἄχορδον ἐπὶ τοῦ τῷ τόξῳ βάλλοντος: ἡ μὲν γὰρ φόρμιγξ κινδυνῶδες ἐπὶ τοῦ τόξου, τῷ δὲ ἀχόρδῳ ἠσφάλισται. Out of this Wagner, Fr. Trag. Gr. III 100, and the writer of the article Theognis No. 11 in Biog. Dict., have made what they print as a verse, παρατίθεται τὸ τόξον, φόρμιγγ᾽ ἄχορδον.
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