Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

For his employment of words such as olli, [*]( Archaic for illi. ) quianam, [*](Because.) moerus, [*]( Archaic for murus (Aen. x. 24.). ) pone [*](Behind.) and pellacia [*]( Deceitfulness ( Aen. ii. 90). ) gives his work that impressive air of antiquity which is so attractive in pictures, but which no art of man can counterfeit. But we must not overdo it, and such words must not be dragged out from the deepest darkness of the past. Quaeso is old enough: what need for us to say quaiso? [*](quaeso = pray, oppido quite, exactly. ) Oppido was still used by my older contemporaries, but I fear that no one would tolerate it now. At any rate, antegerio, [*](Quite, very.) which means the same, would certainly never be used by anyone who was not possessed with a passion for notoriety.

What need have we of acrumnosum? [*](Wretched.) It is surely enough to call a thing horridum. Reor may be tolerated, autumo [*](Assert.) smacks of tragedy, proles [*](Offspring.) has become a rarity, while prosapia [*](Stock, family.) stamps the man who uses it as lacking taste. Need I say more Almost the whole language has changed.

But there are still some old words that are endeared to us by

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their antique sheen, while there are others that we cannot avoid using occasionally, such, for example, as nuncupare and fari: [*](Name, speak.) there are yet others which it requires some daring to use, but which may still be employed so long as we avoid all appearance of that affectation which Virgil [*](Catal. ii. ) has derided so cleverly:
  1. Britain's Thucydides, whose mad Attic brain
  2. Loved word-amalgams like Corinthian bronze,
  3. First made a horrid blend of words from Gaul,
  4. Tau, al, min, sil and God knows how much else,
  5. Then mixed them in a potion for his brother!
This was a certain Cimber who killed his brother,

a fact which Cicero recorded in the words,

Cimber has killed his brother German.
[*](Phil. XI. vi. 14. A pun on the two meanings of gemanus, brother and German. ) The epigram against Sallust is scarcely less well known:
  1. Crispus, you, too, Jugurtha's fall who told,
  2. And filched such store of words from Cato old.

It is a tiresome kind of affectation; any one can practise it, and it is made all the worse by the fact that the man who catches the infection will not choose his words to suit his facts, but will drag in irrelevant facts to provide an opportunity for the use of such words. The coining of new words is, as I stated in the first book, [*](I. v. 70) more permissible in Greek, for the Greeks did not hesitate to coin nouns to represent certain sounds and emotions, and in truth they were taking no greater liberty than was taken by the first men when they gave names to things.

Our own writers have ventured on a few attempts at composition and derivation, but have not met with

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much success. I remember in my young days there was a dispute between Pomponius and Seneca which even found its way into the prefaces of their works, as to whether gradus eliminate [*]( Sc. moves his steps beyond the threshold. ) was a phrase which ought to have been allowed in tragedy. But the ancients had no hesitation about using even expectorate [*](banishes from his heart.) and, after all, it presents exactly the same formation as exanimat.

Of the coining of words by expansion and inflexion we have examples, such as the Ciceronian [*](De Nat. D. I. xxxiv. 95. ) beatitas and beatitudo, forms which he feels to be somewhat harsh, though he thinks they may be softened by use. Derivatives may even be fashioned from proper names, quite apart from ordinary words, witness Sullaturit [*](a Att. IX. x. 6. Desires to be a second Sulla. ) in Cicero and Fimbriatus and Figulatus [*]( Metamorphosed into Figulus. Presumably refers to Clusinius Figulus, see VII. ii. 26. ) in Asinius.