[18]
For my own part I should not regard a phrase
like “the shepherd of the people” as admissible in
pleading, although it has the authority of Homer,
nor would I venture to say that winged creatures
“swim through the air,” despite the fact that this
metaphor has been most effectively employed by
Virgil to describe the flight of bees and of Daedalus.1 For metaphor should always either occupy
a place already vacant, or if it fills the room of something else, should be more impressive than that
which it displaces.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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