Institutio Oratoria

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.

A single example from Cicero [*](Verr. v. lxvi. 170. ) will suffice to llustrate all these points.

It is a sin to bind a Roman citizen, a crime to scourge him, little short if the most unnatural murder to put him to death; chat then shall I call his crucifixion?

we should have had several more steps; but after saying that it was

little short of the most unatural murder to put him to death,

What then shall call his crucifixion?

There is a second method of passing beond the highest degree, exemplified in Virgil's description of Lausus: [*](Aen. vii. 649. )

1. Than whom there was not one more fair
2. Saving Laurentian Turnus.

than whom there was not

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one more fair

There is also a third sort, which is not attained by gradation, a height which is not a degree beyond the superlative, but such that nothing greater can be conceived.

You beat your mother. What more need I say? You beat your mother.

It is also possible to heighten our style less obviously, but perhaps yet more effectively, by introducing a continuous and unbroken series in which each word is stronger than the last, as Cicero [*](Phil. I. xxv. 63. ) does when he describes how Antony vomited

before an assembly of the Roman people, while performing a public duty, while Master of the Horse.

Another might have broken up the series and lingered over each step in the ascending scale, but Cicero hastens to his climax and reaches the height not by laborious effort, but by the impetus of his speed. Just as this form of amplification rises to a climax, so, too, the form which depends on comparison seeks to rise from the less to the greater, since by raising what is below it must necessarily exalt that which

If this had befallen you at the dinner-table in the midst of your amazing potations, who would not have thought it unseemly? But it occurred at an assembly of the Roman people.

In truth, if my slaves feared me as all your fellowcitizens fear you, I should think it wise to leave my house.

At times, again, we may advance a parallel to make something which we desire to exaggerate seem greater than ever, as Cicero does in the pro Cluentio, [*](cp. v. xiii. 24. ) where, after telling a story of a woman of Miletus who took a bribe from the reversionary heirs to prevent the birth of her expected child, lie cries,

How much greater is the punishment deserved by Oppianicus for the same offence! For that woman, by doing violence to her own body did but torture herself, whereas he procured the same result by applying violence and torture to the body of another.

I would not, however, have anyone think that this method is identical with that used in argument, where the greater is inferred from the less, although there is a certain resemblance between the two. For in the latter case we are aiming at proof, in the former at amplification; for example, in the passage just cited about Oppianicus, the object of the comparison is not to show that his action was a crime, but that it was even worse than another crime. There is, however, a certain affinity between the two methods, and I will therefore repeata passage which I quoted there, although my present purpose is different.

For what I have now to demonstrate is that when amplification is our purpose we

Did that illustrious citizen, the pontifex maximus, Publius Scipio, acting merely in his private capacity, kill Tiberius Gracchus when he introduced but slight changes for the worse that did not seriously impair the constitution of the state, and shall we as consuls suffer Catiline to live, whose aim was to lay waste the whole world with fire and sword?

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,