Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

We must also avoid macrology, that is, the employment of more words than are necessary, as, for instance, in the sentence of Livy,

The ambassadors, having failed to obtain peace, went back home, whence they had come.

[*](Fr. 62, Hertz. ) On the other hand, periphrasis, which is akin to this blemish, is regarded as a virtue. Another fault is pleonasm, when we overload our style with a superfluity of words, as in the phrase,

I saw it with my eyes,

where

I saw it

would have been sufficient.

Cicero passed a witty comment on a fault of this kind in a declamation of Hirtius when he said that a child had been carried for ten months in his mother's womb.

Oh,

he said,

I suppose other women carry them in their bags.

[*](perulra means a small wallet. But it is noteworthy that in Apul. Met. V. xiv. it is used = uterus, and the doubleentendre was probably current in Cicero's time. ) Sometimes, however, the form of pleonasm, of which I have just given an example, may have a pleasing effect when employed for the sake of emphasis, as in the Virgilian phrase [*](Aen. iv- 359. ) :

With mine own ears his voice I heard.

But whenever the addition is not deliberate,

but merely tame and redundant, it must be regarded as a fault. There is also a fault entitled περιεργία, which I may perhaps translate by superfluous elaboration, which differs from its corresponding virtue much as fussiness differs from industry, and superstition from religion. Finally, every word which neither helps the sense nor the style may be regarded as faulty.