Institutio Oratoria

Here Catiline is compared to Gracchus, the constitution of the state to the whole world, a slight change for the worse to fire and sword and desolation, and a private citizen to the consuls, all comparisons affording ample opportunity for further individual expansion, if anyone should desire so to do.

With regard to the amplificalion produced by reasoning, we must consider whether reasoning quite expresses my meaning. I am not a stickler for exact terminology, provided the sense is clear to any serious student. My motive in using this term was, however, this, that this form of amplification produces its effect at a point other than that where it is actually introduced. One thing is magnified in order to effect a corresponding augmentation elsewhere, and it is by reasoning that our hearers are then led on from the first point to the second which we desire to emplasise.

Cicero, when he is about to reproach Antony with his drunkenness and vomiting, says, [*](Cat. i. i. 3. Phil. ii. xxv. 63. )

You with such a throat, such flanks, such burly strength in every limb of your prize-fighter's body,