Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/85

 

for singulars sometimes fall with a more impressive dignity, rousing the imagination by the mere sense of vast number.3 Such is the effect of those words of Oedipus in Sophocles—

 

"Oh fatal, fatal ties!

Ye gave us birth, and we being born ye sowed
The self-same seed, and gave the world to view
Sons, brothers, sires, domestic murder foul,
Brides, mothers, wives. … Ay, ye laid bare
The blackest, deepest place where Shame can dwell."^[1]

 

Here we have in either case but one person, first Oedipus, then Jocasta; but the expansion of number into the plural gives an impression of multiplied calamity. So in the following plurals—

 

"There came forth Hectors, and there came Sarpedons."

 

And in those words of Plato's (which we have already adduced elsewhere),4 referring to the Athenians: "We have no Pelopses or Cadmuses or Aegyptuses or Danauses, or any others out of all the mob of Hellenised barbarians, dwelling among us; no, this is the land of pure Greeks, with no mixture of foreign elements,"^[2] etc. Such an accumulation of words in the plural number necessarily gives greater pomp and sound to a subject. But we must only have recourse to this device when the nature of our theme makes it allowable to amplify, to multiply, or to speak in the tones of exaggeration or

 

1. O. R. 1403.
2. Menex. 245 D.