[9]
And as the poets, although their utterances were devoid of sense,
appeared to have gained their reputation through their style, it was a poetical
style that first came into being, as that of Gorgias.1 Even now the majority of the uneducated think
that such persons express themselves most beautifully, whereas this is not the
case, for the style of prose is not the same as that of poetry. And the result
proves it; for even the writers of tragedies do not employ it in the same
manner, but as they have changed from the tetrametric to the iambic meter,
because the latter, of all other meters, most nearly resembles prose, they have
in like manner discarded all such words as differ from those of ordinary
conversation, with which the early poets used to adorn their writings, and which
even now are employed by the writers of hexameters. It is therefore ridiculous
to imitate those who no longer employ that manner of writing.
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