prose style freely draw examples from poetry; for their
rhetoric, more explicitly than most modern rhetoric, real-
ized that the appeal of public address, in so far as it is an
appeal of style, is largely imaginative and rhythmical. ²
Polybius, indeed, reproaches Phylarchus for his eagerness
to be pathetic and his habit of visualizing the terrible,
"as do the writers of tragedies" ³ ; but as a restriction on
style in history this is quite exceptional and would in-
volve disparaging Thucydides. The common view of
history is summed up playfully by Lucian: "Let the
[historian's] thought, in so far as it too is high-sounding
and uplifted, appropriate and seize something of poetic,
especially when it is involved in arrays and battles by land
or sea; for then there will be need of a poetic wind to fill
the sails and bear the tall ship over the waves." ⁴ In ora-
tory the ancients specifically inculcated imaginative visu-
alization, and taught it from the poets. Their general dis-
tinction of style between prose and verse was in the habit
of rhythms. No, the ancient distinction between rhetoric
and poetic is far more than a differentiation of style.

The difference that Aristotle saw between history and
poetry is far deeper; and perhaps this was in the mind of
Polybius when he went on to say, ⁵ "the end of history is
not the same as that of tragedy, but the opposite," and
complained that Phylarchus was too fond of working
up crises (Άεριέτειαι). Even the flippant Lucian may
have meant to imply, though he does not carry out, a
deeper difference when he said: ⁶ "the undertakings of the

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