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?