Institutio Oratoria

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,

and mentioning the worst of crimes, he adds,

What then shall call his crucifixion?

Consequently, since he had ready exhausted his vocabulary of crime, words must necessarily fail him to describe something still orse.

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.

or here the words

than whom there was not

v7-9 p.267

one more fair

give us the superlative, on which the poet proceeds to superimpose a still higher degree.

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.

For to make a thing so great as to be incapable of augmentation is in itself a kind of augmentation.