Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

I will now proceed to the next subject for discussion, which is, as I have said, that of tropes, or modes, as the most distinguished Roman rhetoricians call them. Rules for their use are given by the teachers of literature as well. But I postponed the discussion of the subject when I was dealing with literary education, because it seemed to me that the theme would have greater importance if handled in connexion with the ornaments of oratory, and that it ought to be reserved for treatment on a larger scale.

By a trope is meant the artistic alteration of a word or phrase from its proper meaning to another. This is a subject which has given rise to interminable disputes among the teachers of literature, who have quarrelled no less violently with the philosophers than among themselves over the problem of the genera and species into which tropes may be divided, their number and their correct classification.

I propose to disregard such quibbles as in no wise concern the training of an orator, and to proceed to discuss those tropes which are most necessary and meet with most general acceptance, contenting myself merely with noting the fact that some tropes are employed to help out our meaning and others to adorn our style, that some arise from words used properly and others from words used metaphorically, and that the changes involved concern not merely individual words, but also our thoughts and the structure of our sentences.

In view of these facts I regard those writers as mistaken who have held that tropes necessarily involved the substitution of word for word. And I do not ignore the fact that

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as a rule the tropes employed to express our meaning involve ornament as well, though the converse is not the case, since there are some which are intended solely for the purpose of embellishment.

Let us begin, then, with the commonest and by far the most beautiful of tropes, namely, metaphor, the Greek term for our translatio. It is not merely so natural a turn of speech that it is often employed unconsciously or by uneducated persons, but it is in itself so attractive and elegant that however distinguished the language in which it is embedded it shines forth with a light that is all its own.

For if it be correctly and appropriately applied, it is quite impossible for its effect to be commonplace, mean or unpleasing. It adds to the copiousness of language by the interchange of words and by borrowing, and finally succeeds in accomplishing the supremely difficult task of providing a name for everything. A noun or a verb is transferred from the place to which it properly belongs to another where there is either no literal term or the transferred is better than the literal.

We do this either because it is necessary or to make our meaning clearer or, as I have already said, to produce a decorative effect. When it secures none of these results, our metaphor will be out of place. As an example of a necessary metaphor I may quote the following usages in vogue with peasants when they call a vinebud gemma, a gem (what other term is there which they could use?), or speak of the crops being thirsty or the fruit suffering. For the same reason we speak of a hard or rough man, there being no literal term for these temperaments.

On the other hand, when we say that a man is kindled to anger or on fire with greed or that he has fallen into

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error, we do so to enhance our meaning. For none of these things can be more literally described in its own words than in those which we import from elsewhere. But it is a purely ornamental metaphor when we speak of brilliance of style, splendour of birth, tempestuous public assemblies, thunderbolts of eloquence, to which I may add the phrase employed by Cicero [*](Pro Mil. xiii. 34, 35. ) in his defence of Milo where he speaks of Clodius as the fountain, and in another place as the fertile field and material of his client's glory.

It is even possible to express facts of a somewhat unseemly character by a judicious use of metaphor, as in the following passage: [*]( Virg. Georg. iii. 1 )

  1. This do they lest too much indulgence make
  2. The field of generation slothful grow
  3. And choke its idle furrows.
On the whole metaphor is a shorter form of simile, while there is this further difference, that in the latter we compare some object to the thing which we wish to describe, whereas in the former this object is actually substituted for the thing.

It is a comparison when I say that a man did something like a lion, it is a metaphor when I say of him, He is a lion. Metaphors fall into four classes. In the first we substitute one living thing for another, as in the passage where the poet, speaking of a charioteer, [*](Probably from Ennius.) says,

  1. The steersman then
  2. With mighty effort wrenched his charger round.
or when Livy [*](Liv. XXXVIII. liv.) says that Scipio was continually barked at by Cato.

Secondly, inanimate things may be substituted for inanimate, as in the Virgilian.

  1. And gave his fleet the rein,
Aen. vi. 1.
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or inanimate may be substituted for animate, as in
  1. Did the Argive bulwark fall by sword or fate?
From an unknown tragedian.
or animate for inanimate, as in the following lines:
  1. The shepherd sits unknowing on the height
  2. Listening the roar from some far mountain brow.
Aen. ii. 307.

But, above all, effects of extraordinary sublimity are produced when the theme is exalted by a bold and almost hazardous metaphor and inanimate objects are given life and action, as in the phrase

  1. Araxes' flood that scorns a bridge,
Aen. viii. 728.
or in the passage of Cicero, [*](Pro Lit. iii. 9. See VIII. iv. 27. ) already quoted,

where he cries,

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?
Sometimes the effect is doubled, as in Virgil's.
  1. And with venom arm the steel.
Aen. ix. 773.
For both
to arm the steel
and
to arm with venom
are metaphors.

These four kinds of metaphor are further subdivided into a number of species, such as transference from rational beings to rational and from irrational to irrational and the reverse, in which the method is the same, and finally from the whole to its parts and from the parts to the whole. But I am not now teaching boys: my readers are old enough to discover the species for themselves when once they have been given the genus.

While a temperate and timely use of metaphor is

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a real adornment to style, on the other hand, its frequent use serves merely to obscure our language and weary our audience, while if we introduce them in one continuous series, our language will become allegorical and enigmatic. There are also certain metaphors which fail from meanness, such as that of which I spoke above [*](See VIII. iii. 48.) :
  1. There is a rocky wart upon the mountain's
  2. brow.
or they may even be coarse. For it does not follow that because Cicero was perfectly justified in talking of
the sink of the state,
[*]( In Cat. I. v. 12. ) when he desired to indicate the foulness of certain men, we can approve the following passage from an ancient orator:
You have lanced the boils of the state.

Indeed Cicero [*](De Or. iii. xli. 164. ) himself has demonstrated in the most admirable manner how important it is to avoid grossness in metaphor, such as is revealed by the following examples, which he quotes:—

The state was gelded by the death of Africanus,
or
Glaucia, the excrement of the senate-house.

He also points out that a metaphor must not be too great for its subject or, as is more frequently the case, too little, and that it must not be inappropriate. Anyone who realises that these are faults, will be able to detect instances of them only too frequently. But excess in the use of metaphor is also a fault, more especially if they are of the same species.

Metaphors may also be harsh, that is, far-fetched, as in phrases like

the snows of the head
or
  1. Jove with white snow the wintry Alps bespewed.
From Furius, an old epic poet of the second century (not Furius Bibaculus), cp. Hor. S. ii. v. 11.
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The worst errors of all, however, originate in the fact that some authors regard it as permissible to use even in prose any metaphors that are allowed to poets, in spite of the fact that tile latter aim solely at pleasing their readers and are compelled in many cases to employ metaphor by sheer metrical necessity.

For my own part I should not regard a phrase like

the shepherd of the people
as admissible in pleading, although it has the authority of Homer, nor would I venture to say that winged creatures
swim through the air,
despite the fact that this metaphor has been most effectively employed by Virgil to describe the flight of bees and of Daedalus.1 For metaphor should always either occupy a place already vacant, or if it fills the room of something else, should be more impressive than that which it displaces.

What I have said above applies perhaps with even greater force to synecdocheè. For while metaphor is designed to move the feelings, give special distinction to things and place them vividly before the eye, synecdocheè has the power to give variety to our language by making us realise many things from one, the whole from a part, the genus from a species, things which follow from things which have preceded; or, on the other hand, the whole procedure may be reversed. It may, however, be more freely employed by poets than by orators.