Periphrasis, however, is a more risky thing than the others, if it be not employed within measure. For it falls feeble, smacks of frothy talk and the most uncouth thickness; whence Plato — for he is bold about figures, sometimes unseasonably — they jest at, when in the Laws he says, ‘we must let neither silver wealth nor golden be allowed to settle and dwell in the city,’ saying that, if he had forbidden the keeping of sheep, he would have spoken plainly of ‘sheepish’ and ‘oxlike’ wealth. §1
Enough, dearest Terentianus, of these incidental remarks on the use of figures for sublimity. All such things make discourse more passionate and stirred; passion shares in sublimity as much as character shares in pleasure. §2