Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

This form of jest is as poor as is the invention of punning names by the addition, subtraction or change of letters: I find, for instance, a case where a certain Acisculus was called Pacisculus because of some

compact

which he had made, while one Placidus was nicknamed Acidus because of his

sour

temper, and one Tullius was dubbed Tollius [*]( From toellre to take away. ) because he was a thief.

Such puns are more successful with things than names. It was, for example, a neat hit of Afer's when he said that Manlius Sura, who kept rushing to and fro while he was pleading, waving his hands, letting his toga fall and replacing it, was not merely pleading, but giving himself a lot of needless trouble. [*]( This pan cannot be reproduced. Watson attempts to express it by doing business in pleading and overdoing it. But overdoing it has none of the neatness of salagere, which is said to have a spice of wit about it, since it means lit. to do enough, an ironic way of saying to overdo it. ) For there is a spice of wit about the word satagere in itself, even if there were no resemblance to any other word.

Similar jests may be produced by the addition or removal of the aspirate, or by splitting up a word or joining it to another: the effect is generally poor, but the practice is occasionally permissible. Jests drawn from names are of the same type. Cicero introduces a number of such jests against Verres, but always as quotations

v4-6 p.469

from others. On one occasion he says that he would sweep [*](verres is also the second pers. sing. of the future of verro. ) everything away, for his name was Verres; on another, that he had given more trouble to Hercules, whose temple he had pillaged, than was given by the Erymanthine

boar

; on another, that he was a bad

priest

who had left so worthless a pig behind him. [*](verres means a boar and hero suggests a pig that should have been killed as a victim. For these jests see Verr. II. xxi. 62, IV. xliii. 95, I. xlvi. 121 respectively. Compare also IV. xxiv. 53 and xxv. 57. ) For Verres' predecessor was named Sacerdos.

Sometimes, however, a lucky chance may give us an opportunity of employing such jests with effect, as for instance when Cicero in the pro Caecina [*]( x. 27. The reference must be to the make-up of Phormio on the stage: there is nothing in the play to suggest the epithet black. ) says of the witness Sextus Clodius Phormio,

He was not less black or less bold than the Phormio of Terence.