Furthermore plants similarly, each from the topics of its habitat, of the god to which it is dedicated, as the olive to Athena, of its nurture, as how it is grown. If it needs much care, you will marvel at this; if little, at that. You will tell concerning its body, its rapid growth, its beauty, and whether it is ever-blooming, as the olive. Then its usefulness, on which you will dwell most. Comparisons you will lay hold of everywhere. Furthermore encomium of a city you may undertake from these topics without difficulty. For you will tell of its race that its citizens were autochthonous, and concerning its nurture that they were nourished by the gods, and concerning its education that they were educated by the gods. And you will expound, as in the case of a man, of what sort the city is in its manners and institutions, and what its pursuits and accomplishments. COMPARISON Comparison has been included both under _commonplace_ as a means of our amplifying misdeeds, and also under _encomium_ as a means of amplifying good deeds, and finally has been included as having the same force in censure. But since some (authors) of no small reputation have made it an exercise by itself, we must speak of it briefly. It proceeds, then, by the encomiastic topics; for we compare city with city as to the men who came from them, race with race, nurture with nurture, pursuits, affairs, external relations, and the manner of death and what follows. Likewise if you compare plants, you will set over against one another the gods who give them, the places in which they grow, the cultivation, the use of their fruits, etc. Likewise also if you compare things done, you will tell who first undertook them, and will compare with one another those who pursued them as to qualities of soul and body. Let the same principle be accepted for all. Now sometimes we draw our comparisons by equality, showing the things which we compare as equal either in all respects or in several; sometimes we put the one ahead, praising also the other to which we prefer it; sometimes we blame the one utterly and praise the other, as in a comparison of justice and wealth. There is even comparison with the better, where the task is to show the less equal to the greater, as in a comparison of Heracles with Odysseus. But such comparison demands a powerful orator and a vivid style; and the working out always needs vivacity because of the need of making the transitions swift. CHARACTERIZATION (ΗΘΟΠΟΙΙΑ)[62]