Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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,
etc. What have his throat and flanks to do with his drunkenness? The reference is far from pointless: for by looking at them we are enabled to estimate the quantity of
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the wine which he drank at Hippias' wedding, and was unable to carry or digest in spite of the fact that his bodily strength was worthy of a prizefighter. Accordingly if, in such a case, one thing is inferred from another, the term reasoning is neither improper nor extraordinary, since it has been applied on similar grounds to one of the bases. [*](See III. vi. 43 sqq. VII. v. 2.) So, again,

amplification results from subsequent events, since the violence with which the wine burst from him was such that the vomiting was not accidental nor voluntary, but a matter of necessity, at a moment when it was specially unseemly, while the food was not recently swallowed, as is sometimes the case, but the residue of the revel of the preceding day.

On the other hand, amplification may equally result from antecedent circumstances; for example, when Juno made her request to Aeolus, the latter [*](Aen. i. 81. )

  1. "Turned his spear and smote
  2. The mountain's caverned side, and forth the winds
  3. Rushed in a throng,"
whereby the poet shows what a mighty tempest will ensue.

Again, when we have depicted some horrible circumstance in such colours as to raise the detestation of our audience to its height, we then proceed to make light of them in order that what is to follow may seem still more horrible: consider the following passage from Cicero: [*](Verr. 5, 44, 177. )

These are but trivial offences for so great a criminal. The captain of a warship from a famous city bought off' his threatened scourging for a price: a humane concession! Another paid down a sum of money to save his head from the axe: a perfectly ordinary circumstance!
Does
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not the orator employ a process of reasoning to enable the audience to infer how great the implied crime must be when such actions were but humane and ordinary in comparison? So, again, one thing may be magnified by allusion to another: the valour of Scipio is magnified by extolling the fame of Hannibal as a general, and we are asked to marvel at the courage of the Germans and the Gauls in order to enhance the glory of Gaius Caesar.