estic 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."

[Footnote 1: _O. R._ 1403.]

4
And in those words of Plato's (which we have already adduced elsewhere),
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 passion. To overlay every sentence with
ornament[3] is very pedantic.

[Footnote 2: _Menex._ 245, D.]

[Footnote 3: Lit. "To hang bells everywhere," a metaphor from
the bells which were attached to horses' trappings on festive
occasions.]

XXIV

On the other hand, the contraction of plurals into singulars sometimes
creates an appearance of great dignity; as in that phrase of
Demosthenes: "Thereupon all Peloponnesus was divided."[1] There is
another in Herodotus: "When Phrynichus brought a drama on the stage
entitled _The Taking of Miletus_, the whole theatre fell a
weeping"--instead of "all the spectators." This knitting together of a
number of scattered particulars into one whole gives them an aspect of
corporate life. And the beauty of both uses lies, I think, in their
betokening emotion, by giving a sudden change of complexion to the
circumstances,--whether a word which is strictly singular is
unexpectedly changed into a plural,--or whether a number of isolated
units are combined by the use of a single sonorous word under one head.

[Footnote 1: _De Cor._ 18.]

XXV

When past events are introduced as happening in present time the
narrative form is changed into a dramatic action. Such is that
description in Xenophon: "A man who has fallen, and is being trampled
under foot by Cyrus's horse, strikes the belly of the animal with his
scimitar; the horse starts aside and unseats Cyrus, and he falls."
Sim