Institutio Oratoria

IV. The first method of amplification or attenuation is to be found in the actual word employed to describe a thing. For example, we may say that a man who was beaten was murdered, or that a dishonest fellow is a robber, or, on the other hand, we may say that one who struck another merely touched him, and that one who wounded another merely hurt him. The following passage from the pro Caelio, [*](xvi. 38.) provides examples of both:

If a widow lives freely, if being by nature bold she throws restraint to the winds, makes wealth an excuse for luxury, and strong passions for playing the harlot, would this be a reason for my regarding a man who was somewhat free in his method of saluting her to be an adulterer?

For here he calls an immodest woman a harlot, and says that one who had long been her lover saluted her with a certain freedom. This sort of amplification may be strengthened and made more striking by pointing the comparison between words of stronger meaning and those for which we propose to substitute them, as Cicero does in denouncing Verres [*](Verr. I. iii. 9. ) :

I have brought before you, judges, not a thief, but a plunderer; not an adulterer, but a ravisher; not a mere committer of sacrilege, but the enemy of all religious observance and all holy things; not an assassin,

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but a bloodthirsty butcher who has slain our fellowcitizens and our allies.

In this passage the first epithets are bad enough, but are rendered still worse by those which follow. I consider, However, that there are four principal methods of implication: augmentation, comparison, reasoning and accumulation. Of these, augmentation is most impressive when it ends grandeur even to comparative insignificance. This may be effected either by one step or by everal, and may be carried not merely to the highest degree, but sometimes even beyond it.