… most nourishing and fertile is the line of Anacreon: ‘No more do I turn my thoughts to the Thracian.’ For the same reason that fresh phrase of Theopompus deserves praise: by its analogical fitness it seems to me most expressive, though Caecilius for some reason finds fault with it. ‘Philip,’ he says, ‘was clever at swallowing-down circumstances by force.’ Common usage is sometimes far more vivid than ornament; it is recognised at once from common life, and the familiar is the more credible. So of one who, for greedy gain, endures shameful and squalid things resolutely and even with pleasure, ‘to swallow-down circumstances’ is most forcibly applied. §1
Of the same kind are the lines of Herodotus: ‘Cleomenes, gone mad, cut his own flesh with a small dagger into bits, until, slicing himself up entirely, he killed himself.’ And, ‘Pythes kept on fighting on the ship until he was wholly butchered.’ These come close to the colloquial, but they are not vulgar in their force. §2