Experience with all the Associated Arts has clearly demonstrated the validity of this law. The strength of the devices used by the poet lies in simplifying the presentation of his pictures. Metaphor is necessary to the poet, for without it he would be powerless to present pictures made up of a number of parts, but he also uses it for the purpose of throwing simple images upon the mind more rapidly, and consequently more forcibly, than would be possible if direct means were employed; and the beauty of the metaphor appears the greater according as it more completely fills in the picture which the poet is desirous of presenting. When other artifices than metaphor or simile are applied, the result only appears very beautiful when the condensation of the language used is extreme, and when there is no break in the delineation of the action. A few supreme examples of beauty derived from the principal devices of the poet for presenting his pictures may be instanced, and it will be found that in each case the power of the image is directly due to the brevity of expression, the simplicity of description and metaphor, or the unimpeded representation of action. More than three thousand years have passed since the period assigned to Helen of Troy, and yet each generation of men and women as they learn of her, have deeply sealed upon their minds the impression that she was of surpassing beauty, almost beyond the reach of human conception. We have practically no details of her appearance from Homer or Hesiod, except that she was neat-ankled, white-armed, rich-haired, and had the sparkling eyes of the Graces, but already in the time of Hesiod her renown "spread over the earth." What was it then that established the eternal fame of her beauty? Simply a few words of Homer indicating the startling effect of her appearance before the elders of Troy. We are allowed to infer that these dry, shrunken-formed sages, shrill-voiced with age, became passionately disturbed by a mere glance at her figure, and nervously agreed with each other that little blame attached to the Greeks and Trojans for suffering such long and severe hardships on account of her, for only with the goddesses could she be compared. How wondrous must be the beauty when a glimpse of it suffices to hasten the blood through shrivelled veins, and provoke tempestuous currents to awake atrophied nerves! Without the record of this incident, the vague notices of Helen's appearance would be very far from sufficient to account for the universal recognition of her marvellous beauty.[22] [Illustration: PLATE 7 (See page 122) Greek Sculpture, 4th Century B.C. Attributed to Scopas Greek Bronze, 3d Century B.C. Heads of Demeter]