[81]
We find also
shorter similes, such as “Wandering like wild beasts
through the woods,” or the passage from Cicero's
speech against Clodius:1 “He fled from the court
like a man escaping naked from a fire.” Similar
examples from everyday speech will occur to
everyone.
Such comparisons reveal the gift not merely of
placing a thing vividly before the eye, but of doing
so with rapidity and without waste of detail.
1 Now lost.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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