ommand and prayer, simple statement and threat, question and answer,
and so forth. The theory of such matters, however, belongs to Elocution
and the professors of that art. Whether the poet knows these things or
not, his art as a poet is never seriously criticized on that account.
What fault can one see in Homer's 'Sing of the wrath, Goddess'?--which
Protagoras has criticized as being a command where a prayer was meant,
since to bid one do or not do, he tells us, is a command. Let us pass
over this, then, as appertaining to another art, and not to that of
poetry.

20

The Diction viewed as a whole is made up of the following parts:
the Letter (or ultimate element), the Syllable, the Conjunction, the
Article, the Noun, the Verb, the Case, and the Speech. (1) The Letter is
an indivisible sound of a particular kind, one that may become a factor
in an intelligible sound. Indivisible sounds are uttered by the brutes
also, but no one of these is a Letter in our sense of the term. These
elementary sounds are either vowels, semivowels, or mutes. A vowel is a
Letter having an audible sound without the addition of another Letter.
A semivowel, one having an audible sound by the addition of another
Letter; e.g. S and R. A mute, one having no sound at all by itself, but
becoming audible by an addition, that of one of the Letters which have
a sound of some sort of their own; e.g. D and G. The Letters differ in
various ways: as produced by different conformations or in different
regions of the mouth; as aspirated, not aspirated, or sometimes one
and sometimes the other; as long, short, or of variable quantity; and
further as having an acute grave, or intermediate accent.

The details of these matters we must leave to the metricians. (2) A
Syllable is a nonsignificant composite sound, made up of a mute and a
Letter having a sound (a vowel or semivowel); for GR, without an A,
is just as much a Syllable as GRA, with an A. The various forms of the
Syllable also belong to the theory of metre. (3) A Conjunction is (a) a
non-significant sound which, when one significant sound is formable out
of several, neither hinders nor aids the union, and which, if the Speech
thus formed stands by itself (apart from other Speeches) must not be
inserted at the beginning of it; e.g. _men_, _de_, _toi_, _de_. Or (b)
a non-significant sound capable of combining two or more significant
sounds into one; e.g. _amphi_, _peri_, etc. (4) An Article is a