ABSTRACT
John Skelton's translation of Diodorus Siculus, made from the Latin version of Poggio, included as an extreme example of aureation in prose. Description of style as 'aureate' originated early in the fifteenth century with John Lydgate, who used it of his own stylistic aspirations in verse. It implies a careful consciousness in verbal choice based on rhetorical ideals, and more particularly a choice discourse both euphony in sound and dignity through the associations of the words selected. Generally results employment of vocabulary and sentence constructions with strong Latin associations. By Skelton's time, the practice was a fully conscious and deliberate literary technique expressed in lexical doublets, and heavy change and qualification. Looking back in his poem Phyllyp Sparowe time of Chaucer, Skelton found his English attractively simple and clear; but the praise is ambiguous, also implying some lack of distinction. Diodorus Siculus own translation, Skelton concerned to draw attention to himself as a learned practitioner in the artifice of rhetoric.
