Chapter XIX

... The removal of connecting particles gives a quick rush and "torrent rapture" to a passage, the writer appearing to be actually almost left behind by his own words. There is an example in Xenophon: "Clashing their shields together they pushed, they fought, they slew, they fell." And the words of Eurylochus in the Odyssey--

"We passed at thy command the woodland's shade;

We found a stately hall built in a mountain glade."

Words thus severed from one another without the intervention of stops give a lively impression of one who through distress of mind at once halts and hurries in his speech. And this is what Homer has expressed by using the figure Asyndeton.