Of the elements that contribute to sublimity, which we set forth at the beginning, the fifth is still left for us, my excellent friend: composition itself in a certain sort of order. Having paid that sufficient treatment in two separate works, so far as our theory could reach, we may add to the present subject only this much by way of necessity: that harmony is not only by nature an instrument of persuasion and pleasure to men, but also a wonderful instrument of grand expression and passion. §1
Does not the flute infuse certain emotions into the hearers, and produce them, as it were, beside themselves and full of corybantic ecstasy, and, by yielding a certain rhythmic step, force the listener to walk in step with it and to be conformed to the tune, even were he wholly unmusical? And, by Zeus, do not the notes of the cithara, signifying nothing in themselves, by the changes of their sounds and the striking of one against another and the mingling of the chord, often work upon us, as you know, a wonderful spell? §2
These (one might say) are reflections and bastard imitations of persuasion, not the genuine workings of human nature, as I said. So shall we not believe that composition, being a kind of harmony of words natural to men and laying hold of the very soul, not only of the hearing, stirring various forms of names, thoughts, things, beauties, sweetness, all of them dear and akin to us, and at the same time, by the mingling and many-shaped variety of its own sounds, introducing into the souls of those near the speaker the passion present in him, and ever bringing the hearers into participation in it, putting greatness together by the building-up of expressions, by these very things both bewitches us and disposes us in each case toward bulk and dignity and sublimity, and toward whatever else it embraces in itself, in every way mastering our thinking? Yet to dispute about things so universally agreed would itself be madness; experience is sufficient warrant. §3
There is a thought that seems sublime, and is in truth wonderful, which Demosthenes adds to the decree: ‘This decree caused the danger surrounding the city at that time to pass by, like a cloud.’ But the harmony has uttered it not less than the thought itself; the whole stands on dactylic rhythms, the noblest of all and most makers of greatness, since they constitute the heroic verse, the most beautiful we know. Take it from its proper place where you will: ‘this decree, like a cloud, made the danger pass by,’ or, by Zeus, cut off a single syllable: ‘made it pass like a cloud,’ and you will see how much the harmony chimes in with the sublimity. The very ‘like a cloud’ rests on the long first rhythm, measured by even longer time-beats; remove that one syllable, ‘as a cloud,’ and at once the magnitude is mutilated by the syncope; just as conversely, if you extend it to ‘to make it pass by, as it were, a cloud,’ the meaning is the same, but does not strike the ear in the same way, since by the length of the final beats the abrupt sublimity is unloosed and slackened. §4