 Ancient rhetoricians would maintain that Homer’s simile and a metaphor employing the epithet “the lion” so as to manifestly refer to the man Achilles are alike in that they make or present one and the same comparison, each in its own way: both bits of language compare Achilles to a lion. Aristotle goes on to contend that “similes are metaphors needing an explanatory word” (Poetics 1407a)—as if the difference between the “The lion [Achilles] rushed” (metaphor) and “He [Achilles] rushed as a lion” (simile) came down to the presence in the latter of a stage direction indicating that Achilles went on the attack in the guise of a lion. A simile is thus a lengthened metaphor. Quintilian turns things round, speaking of metaphors as shortened similes: