how shall we further analyse them,
and where does the imitator begin? Imitation of the essence is made by
syllables and letters; ought we not, therefore, first to separate the
letters, just as those who are beginning rhythm first distinguish the
powers of elementary, and then of compound sounds, and when they have
done so, but not before, they proceed to the consideration of rhythms?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Must we not begin in the same way with letters; first
separating the vowels, and then the consonants and mutes (letters which
are neither vowels nor semivowels), into classes, according to the
received distinctions of the learned; also the semivowels, which are
neither vowels, nor yet mutes; and distinguishing into classes the
vowels themselves? And when we have perfected the classification of
things, we shall give them names, and see whether, as in the case of
letters, there are any classes to which they may be all referred (cf.
Phaedrus); and hence we shall see their natures, and see, too, whether
they have in them classes as there are in the letters; and when we have
well considered all this, we shall know how to apply them to what they
resemble--whether one letter is used to denote one thing, or whether
there is to be an admixture of several of them; just, as in painting,
the painter who wants to depict anything sometimes uses purple only, or
any other colour, and sometimes mixes up several colours, as his method
is when he has to paint flesh colour or anything of that kind--he uses
his colours as his figures appear to require them; and so, too, we shall
apply letters to the expression of objects, either single letters when
required, or several letters; and so we shall form syllables, as they
are called, and from syllables make nouns and verbs; and thus, at last,
from the combinations of nouns and verbs arrive at language, large and
fair and whole; and as the painter made a figure, even so shall we make
speech by the art of the namer or the rhetorician, or by some other
art. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I was carried
away--meaning to say that this was the way in which (not we but) the
ancients formed language, and what they put together we must take to
pieces in like manner, if we are to attain a scientific view of the
whole subject, and we must see whether the primary, and also whether the
secondary elements are rightly given or not, for if they are not, the
composition of them, my d