That periphrasis, too, is a maker of sublimity, no one, I think, would doubt. As in music, the principal note is made the sweeter by the accompanying tones, so periphrasis often joins its voice with literal expression and harmonises richly with it, especially if it has nothing puffed or unmusical, but is sweetly tempered. §1
Plato is a sufficient witness in the opening of the Funeral Oration: ‘In deed, these men have what is theirs from us; having attained which, they go forth on their fated journey, escorted in common by the city, and each privately by his kinsfolk.’ He has called death ‘the fated journey’ and the obtaining of customary rites ‘a public escort by the country.’ Has he merely amplified the thought, or has he, taking up bare expression, made melody of it, pouring around it from the periphrasis a kind of harmony for sweet sound? §2
And Xenophon: ‘You believe that toil is a guide to a pleasant life; and you have stored up in your souls the noblest and most martial possession of all: for you delight in praise more than in anything else.’ Instead of saying ‘you are willing to toil,’ he said ‘to make toil a guide to pleasant living,’ and by extending the rest similarly, he added a great thought to the praise. §3
And there is that inimitable line of Herodotus: ‘Upon those of the Scythians who plundered the temple, the goddess put the female disease.’ §4