Prose diction has full liberty and permission to diversify the _compositio_ by whatever changes it pleases. A style is finest of all when it has the most frequent rests and changes of harmony; when one thing is said within a period, another without it; when one period is formed by the interweaving of a larger number of clauses, another by that of a smaller; when among the clauses themselves one is short, another longer, one roughly wrought, another more finished; when the rhythms take now one form, now another, and the figures are of all kinds, and the voice-pitches—the so-called “accents”—are various, and skillfully avoid satiety.[44] Aptness,[45] or appropriateness to the actors and the action, is analyzed rather as imitative smoothness or roughness in detail than as the speed of the whole stanza or paragraph. Dionysius says nothing, for instance, of the staccato effect of frequent predication. His text is the famous stone of Sisyphus from the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_. Finally[46] Dionysius classifies sentence movement into three typical modes:[47] the rough (αὐστηρά), the smooth (γλαφυρά) or florid (ἀνθηρά), and the blended (εὔκρατος). Certain accidental likenesses to the familiar threefold classification of style[48] should not obscure the fact that we have here something different, a classification not of style in general, but of _compositio_. The first mode Dionysius defines as seeking rather the force of each part than the harmony of the whole. The words stand out separately, without fear of hiatus or other clashing of sounds, and without care for periods.[49] The aim is rather a direct stirring of emotion (πάθος) than a pervasive suggestion of character (ἦθος). This sterner, elder mode, quite different from “the showy and decorative prettiness of our day,”[50] he exemplifies, with his usual minute analysis, from Pindar and Thucydides. The second, or smooth mode[51] is periodic in its sentences and nicely articulated in its clauses and phrases. It tries to combine and interweave its component parts, and thus give, as far as possible, the effect of one continuous utterance. This result is produced by so nicely adjusting the junctures that they admit no appreciable time-interval between the words.[52]