Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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.

There is a similar form of amplification which is effected by reference to something which appears to have been said with quite another purpose in view. The chiefs of Troy [*](Il. iii. 156. ) think it no discredit that Trojan and Greek should endure so many woes for so many years all for the sake of Helen's beauty. How wondrous, then, must her beauty have been! For it is not Paris, her ravisher, that says this; it is not some youth or one of the common herd; no, it is the elders, the wisest of their folk, the counsellors of Priam.

Nay, even the king himself, worn out by a ten years' war, which had cost him the loss of so many of his sons, and threatened to lay his kingdom in the dust, the man who, above all, should have loathed and detested her beauty, the source of all those tears, hears these words, calls her his daughter, and places her by his side, excuses her guilt, and denies that she is the cause of his sorrows.

Again, when Plato in the Symposium [*](218B–219D.) makes Alcibiades confess how he had wished Socrates to treat him, he does not, I think, record these facts with a view to blaming Aleibiades, but rather to show the unconquerable self-control of Socrates, which would not yield even to the charms which the greatest beauty of his day so frankly placed at his disposal.

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We are even given the means of realising the extraordinary stature of the heroes of old by the description of their weapons, such as the shield of Ajax [*](Il. vii. 219. ) and the spear-shaft of Achilles [*](Il. xvi. 140. ) hewn in the forests of Pelion. Virgil [*]( Aen. iii. 659. ) also has made admirable use of this device in his description of the Cyclops. For what an image it gives us of the bulk of that body

Whose hand was propped by a branchless trunk of pine.

So, too, what a giant must Demoleos [*](Aen. v. 264. ) have been,

Whose

corselet manifold
Scarce two men on their shoulders could uphold

And yet the hero buckled it upon him and

Drave the scattering Trojans at full speed.

And again, Cicero [*](Phil. ii. 27. ) could hardly even have conceived of such luxury in Antony himself as he describes when he says,

You might see beds in the chambers of his slaves strewn with the purple coverlets that had once been Pompey's own.

Slaves are using purple coverlets in their chambers, aye, and coverlets that had once been Pompey's! No more, surely, can be said than this, and yet it leaves us to infer how infinitely greater was the luxury of their master.

This form of amplification is near akin to emphasis: but emphasis derives its effect from the actual words, while in this case the effect is produced by inference from the facts, and is consequently far more impressive, inasmuch as facts are more impressive than words.

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Accumulation of words and sentences identical in meaning may also be regarded under the head of amplification. For although the climax is not in this case reached by a series of steps, it is none the less attained by the piling up of words. Take the following example: [*](Pro Lig. iii. 9. )

What was that sword of yours doing, Tubero, the sword you drew on the field of Pharsalus? Against whose body did you aim its point? What meant those arms you bore? Whither were your thoughts, your eyes, your hand, your fiery courage directed on that day? What passion, what desires were yours?

This passage recalls the figure styled συναθροισμός [*](accumulation.) by the Greeks, but in that figure it is a number of different things that are accumulated, whereas in this passage all the accumulated details have but one reference. The heightening of effect may also be produced by making the words rise to a climax. [*](Verr. xv. xlv. 118. )

There stood the porter of the prison, the praetor's executioner, the death and terror of the citizens and allies of Rome, the lictor Sextius.

Attenuation is effected by the same method, since there are as many degrees of descent as ascent. I shall therefore content myself with quoting but one example, namely, the words used by Cicero [*](Leg. Agr. II. V. 13. ) to describe the speech of Rullus:

A few, however, who stood nearest to him suspected that he had intended to say something about the agrarian law.

This passage may be regarded as providing an example of attenuation or of augmentation, according as we consider its literal meaning or fix our attention on the obscurity attributed to Rullus.