Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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
v7-9 p.275
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.